Good Things Lost
by acollectivemind
Summary: In which Dean brings about the end of the world, Sam makes a deal with Crowley, Castiel is nowhere to be found, and Garth has been known to save the day. Set post-series. Dean/Castiel
1. It Happened One (Friday) Night

**Note: This story also appears on AO3. **

It Happened One (Friday) Night

Part 1 of _Good Things Lost_

"Dean."

Dean, of course, chose this moment to ignore Sam. What was the purpose of staying on the phone while they each scoped out different parts of the house if Dean was just going to go incommunicado? This was _not_ how Sam had planned to spend a Friday night.

He should've known his jerkwad older brother wouldn't focus and would screw up their careful infiltration of the haunted house. Emphasis on _careful_. They were dealing with the vengeful ghost of a Hunter, after all. Could even be a Spectre. It wasn't like he could stab it with iron, burn the bastard's bones, and call it a day.

"Dean," Sam repeated into his phone, "we need to leave." His brother was checking the upstairs rooms for possible hunter-remains while he checked the main floor, but something in his gut told him that they shouldn't be there, that they needed to do more research before jumping into this hunt.

"C'mon, Sam, there's gotta be clues or—I don't know—something that will tell us where the bastard died."

"_Dean._"

"Alright, alright, if you're going to be a princess about it. We can come back tomorrow. _In the daytime._"

"I'm not a prince—"

He should have been paying more attention to where he was walking, but sometimes his brother pissed him off so damn much that his common sense didn't work so well. He stepped clean through a rotten floorboard; he felt his left foot dangling in empty air; his arms clawed at something—anything—to keep him from falling through the rest of the way. He failed. He landed with a thud and a thick layer of dust was thrown into the air and had him coughing. It hurt to cough, he realized, but it didn't hurt his lungs. He moved his arm to cover his mouth and hissed in pain. "Shit," he said, "shit! DEAN!"

His arm was definitely broken. And definitely in more than one place, judging from the bone that was sticking out of his forearm. Definitely fractured the ulna. Well, that was a surgery they couldn't afford and a year's worth of recovery time.

"Sammy!"

"Dean!" He could hear his brother's thudding footsteps above him. "Dean! The floor is bad! Be careful!" The footsteps slowed and dulled. After years of sneaking around hunts and away from John Winchester, his brother could move like a mouse (though he rarely felt the need to). He saw his brother's head appear above him.

"Sammy, you okay?"

"No, Dean, I broke my arm."

"Are you sure?"

Sam held up his definitely compound-fractured arm. He hissed again from the pain. "Yep, I'm sure."

"Shit, I'm going to go find something to haul you out with, okay man?"

Sam struggled to sit up on his own without the use of his left arm. "No, wait, you can't haul me out. This is a compound fracture; I can't use it at all."

Dean groaned. It was Dean-speak for "are you fucking kidding me?" Sam heard him plop down on the ground, and again Sam warned his brother about the crappy floorboards. He heard some shuffling and then, "Can you hear me from here?"

"Yeah," he told his brother.

"Ok. So what do we do? "

It wasn't like they could dial 9-1-1. Bringing in a swarm of paramedics into a questionably-stable environment with a pissed off ghost/possible spectre was a bad idea, and Sam knew it. Plus, they were breaking, entering, trespassing, and destroying private property. Even if they had their trusty fake FBI badges with them—which they didn't because Sam had insisted that Dean would probably drop his like he had on their last hunt—once Sam was admitted to a hospital, it was probably only a matter of time until someone figured out they were liars. Good, nobly intentioned liars, but liars nonetheless. No, they needed someone they could trust. Someone like—

"Garth," Sam said, "Call Garth. He's resourceful, and I bet he has a trustworthy doctor somewhere in his list of contacts." He heard Dean get up and wander into the other room. He heard muffled voices and a "yeah, it's pretty bad" and the return of Dean's shuffling feet.

"Garth is coming help. He knows a hospital not far away we can go to," Dean said, "But it could take a while. How bad is it?"

Sam reluctantly examined his arm. Yup, still definitely broken. Definitely hurt like a bitch. Definitely in need of a thorough cleaning to prevent infection. "I need to clean this so it doesn't get infected," Sam told him, "Do we have a first aid kit?" If Sam had his way, there would be at least three kits in the trunk of "Baby."

"Hold on, I'll go look."

After Dean left, Sam investigated the space he had, quite literally, fallen into. Well, investigated as best as he could without trying to get up or move his arm. The room, which was more like a lair, resembled something from the set of _The Mummy. _Boris Karloff, not Brendan Fraser, of course. But the more he looked the more he realized that everything was Greek to him. The walls, peeling and cracked, were classic Greek architecture. Grecian urns lined one wall and old, mostly rotten tapestries lined another; they were covered in what Sam was sure was depictions of ancient Greek warriors. It was strange, he thought, that a Hunter would keep so many Greek objects. The Dead Sea Scrolls would have been less of a surprising discovery. The strangest thing in the room, however, caught his eye. In one corner, on a low pedestal, was a lonely jar. The jar-urn-thingy was the simplest thing in the room. It was plain, it was brass, and it was also the only thing that had its own pedestal, which made it important. Or at least dangerous. Either way, Sam needed to get a closer look. Too bad he had to wait for his brother to get his ass down there to help him stand up.

"Sammy?"

"Still here."

Dean's head appeared in the hole in the floor. "I got something that will help. I don't have any rope, but do you think you can catch it?"

"Dude, broken arm." Which really did hurt like a bitch, not that Sam would say that aloud.

"Damn it." Pause. "I'll be back."

Sam sighed. Dean was nothing if not resourceful. He'd find a way to get him whatever it was that he thought would help Sam's arm, but Sam hated being useless. And with this arm, it looked like he might be useless for a long time, and that would make the macho big brother protective streak in Dean even more dominant than it already was. Sam would be smothered, he knew, but there was nothing to stop Dean from fussing over him. Dean, no matter much he'd deny it, was definitely a mother hen.

Dean returned with an old musty bed sheet that he'd found upstairs. He shredded it to make a makeshift rope and tied a small parcel to it and carefully lowered it to where Sam could reach it. "Whiskey?" asked Sam, "Really?"

"Hey, man, you said you needed to clean that arm. That's the strongest proof I had."

Sam noticed the brand. "Jameson? Dean, this is expensive."

"Sammy, it's got the highest alcohol content. Don't worry, I've got another bottle for me." He held it up. Sam saw that it was a regular bottle of Jack Daniels, but he didn't want to argue with his brother about a) why Dean had two bottles of whiskey on hand or b) why Dean shouldn't waste the expensive booze on Sam's mangled arm. Arguing with Dean was about as useful as arguing with a tree sometimes, although Sam was pretty sure he could get a word in edgewise with a tree.

Also in the parcel that Dean had lowered down were long strips of (hopefully) clean fabric. Upon closer inspection, Sam realized that it was formerly Dean's favorite Led Zeppelin tee. Dean was more worried than Sam had realized. He uncapped the bottle of Jameson and poured a liberal amount on his shattered arm. The stinging alcohol had him making sounds that he knew Dean would tease him about later. Not now, not while they were in trouble, but later, in the comfort of a diner and with a cheeseburger in hand, Dean would give Sam hell for "crying like a little girl." As best he could with one hand, Sam bound the wound to prevent more bleeding and created a makeshift sling. It would have to do until Garth arrived in the next three to six hours. It was going to be a long night, and definitely not the kind of Friday night that Sam had signed up for.

"It'd be nice if we had a guardian angel with us right now," Sam joked.

He instantly regretted it.

"You know he's stuck up there," Dean said. His voice was calm and held a tone of finality that said the topic was closed. Permanently. Like Blockbuster Video.

The thing about Winchesters was that they usually ignored the "Closed" sign on the front door, so Sam chose to ignore Dean's barricade against the topic of Castiel. "Have you even _tried _praying for him?" asked Sam, "I could really use some of that angelic mojo right about now."

Dean didn't say anything, and Sam pictured his brother slumped next to the wall upstairs, hands resting on his knees, eyes staring at nothing in particular. When his brother finally spoke, all he said was, "I do try, but Cas can't answer. Or won't." The flatness of the elder Winchester's voice might have been mistaken for disinterest except for the fact that Sam knew that, concerning Castiel, Dean was anything but. The angel had only recently earned his wings back (although the process would be more accurately described as "fought tooth-and-nail through seven circles of hell to prove his worthiness to rejoin the celestial legions"), and he had immediately broken down the gates to Heaven and given Metatron an eviction notice. Dean assumed that the angels (Cas included) were Upstairs partying it up in their newly reclaimed home, but Sam was certain that a Heavenly Powwow was being held to establish a new chain of command—of which Castiel would most certainly have an opinion. The Fall had changed the Heavenly Host, and the Winchesters were not inclined to think that it was for the better. If Dean had thought angels were dicks before, he doubly did so now. Except for Castiel. Well, most of the time. Some days, Sam wanted to lock the two in a room until Dean and Cas fought out their problems, or to smash their heads together and command, "Now kiss!"

The pain from the broken arm must be affecting him more than he had thought, because Sam heard himself asking his brother, "Do you miss him?"

Shit. Rule #1 of being Dean's brother: no chick flick moments. Well, oops.

"Dude, I'm not gonna talk about Cas. Right now, we gotta come up with a plan to get you outta that basement. Or whatever secret dungeon place you've fallen into. It's not a sex dungeon, is it?"

"It's _not_ a sex dungeon. It's got a bunch of old Greek artifacts though. Strange for a hunter, don't you think?"

"Well, this was a strange dude…what if he can hear us? He's around here somewhere, ya know? He could be ghost eaves-dropping or whatever the hell they do."

"If an angry ghost were nearby, I think we would know."

Dean was silent. Sam knew he'd struck a nerve by bringing up the angel, but Sam was more than a little tired of pussyfooting around the topic. Castiel had cemented himself into the Winchester world the instant he cradled Dean's soul and pulled him out of hell. Dean may not want to acknowledge it, but Castiel was a permanent fixture in his life, just as much as Sam was. Sam knew that no matter how this all played out, this battle of good versus evil, that Castiel would be there at the end of it, standing right next to the Winchesters. Sam knew this as surely as he knew that Dean's favorite color was blue.

Sam heard Dean unscrew the bottle of Jack Daniels. It probably wasn't smart to be drinking while they were on a hunt, but Sam had learned the hard way not to comment on Dean's drinking habits. Instead, Sam grabbed the bottle of Jameson again, uncapped it, and said, "Cheers."

Half a bottle later and Dean was singing "Bad Company" loudly and _really _off-key. In retrospect, they probably should have been quiet, but as Sam had learned the night Dean had been sent to hell, his brother turned to classic rock when shit got really serious. Like now.

"It's the wayyyyy I play! Dirty for dirty! Oh someone double-crossed me….BAD COMPANY!"

Thank Chuck Dean had never decided to pursue a musical career.

"Sammy, do you ever think about that night we sang Bon Jovi?"

More often than Sam cared to admit to. "Sometimes," he said, "But that's in the past now."

Tipsy Dean, however, seemed willing to discuss one of the most painful nights of Sam's life. "You know, sometimes I almost wish it had ended like that. Don't make that bitch face I know you're making. I'm not saying I'd want to go to hell again—God knows that I should be kissing Cas's feet every day for the rest of eternity for pulling my sorry soul out—but I mean, well, I don't know what I mean. But I went out how I wanted to, you know? I said goodbye to you, to Bobby, and I made my peace. The way we live, Sammy, there's no guarantee that's gonna happen again. I don't wanna go out not fightin, you know?"

Sam knew. Sam knew well. His brother was a soldier, through and through. "It's gonna end however it ends," he told Dean, "Not much we can do about it."

"Except come back from the dead."

He laughed. "Yes, we could always do that again."

"How's the arm?"

"It hurts."

"Like a bitch?"

Sam gritted his teeth. He could almost hear Dean's smirk. "Yeah, it hurts like a bitch."

"Do you think you could move enough to get a better look down there? Is there anything we could use to get you out?"

Sam looked around again. "Nope. Not unless we're on the hunt for a jar that magically turns into an escalator."

Dean whistled. "That would be handy right about now. Rub the jar and see if it works."

"That's Aladdin's lamp you're thinking of."

"It could work."

"Not likely."

Sam tried to get up but found it impossible to get his long legs underneath him without using his left arm. He got about halfway stood up before he toppled over. Thankfully, he fell on his rear rather than his injured arm, but he was less than thrilled to add "bruised butt" to his list of injuries.

"Sammy? You alright?"

"Yeah." Sam decided that he might be able to stand up with the help of a wall. He scooted backwards, feeling embarrassingly like a caterpillar, until his back hit the nearest wall. He mentally vomited at the feeling of seventy-year old musty (and probably moldy) wallpaper, but using his thigh and abdominal muscles, managed to get on his feet. This, he decided, was why P.E. coaches made kids do wall-sits in gym class.

He quickly made a more thorough investigation of the basement. He decided that "secret hunter lair" was probably a better description for the pit he'd fallen into. He peered at the tapestries and a few other Greek artifacts. Nope, not useful. He made his way over to the plain jar on the pedestal. He poked it. Nope. Not Aladdin's lamp after all. After realizing that there was nothing that would be useful in getting him back upstairs, he flopped back on the ground and began drinking the Jameson again. "We're gonna be here a while," he called up to his brother, "There is nothing down here that's gonna get me out."

"Figures. Drink up, Sammy boy." He heard Dean uncap the bottle of Jack.

Sam realized that Dean was trying to get him drunk so he wouldn't be able to feel the pain in his arm anymore. Sam knew he should stay alert, that he shouldn't let the whiskey dull his senses, but his arm hurt too damn much for him to really care. "Where'd you get the bottle of Jameson anyway?" he asked his brother.

"Bought it a while ago. Was saving it for a special occasion."

"What occasion?"

"Doesn't matter now. At least it went to good use."

Sam contemplated arguing that the bottle of Jack would have worked just as well, but returned to his earlier conclusion. Argument with Dean = argument with tree. Not worth the bother. He shivered. It was unusually chilly in this secret hunter lair. Hadn't the man heard of space heaters?

He heard Dean get up and shuffle closer to the opening. Dean's face peered over the side. "Hey, I'm going to go look around for minute? Since we're here, might as well look for this bastard's remains."

"Dude, respect the dead. He was a hunter."

Dean snorted. "An off-his-rocker hunter." He left before Sam could give him Bitchface #3, which he reserved for Dean's obnoxious moments.

Dean's smart-ass tone aside, Sam knew he had a point. He wondered once again why a hunter would collect _Greek_ artifacts. Not only collect, but hide in a secret room under the house. He looked around the room again. There had to be _something _here that was important, and it was probably the same reason the ghost was sticking around.

His eye was drawn again to the jar on the pedestal. That had to be it. Later, Sam would blame the Jameson, but right then it seemed like a good idea to get up and walk over to the jar-on-a-pedestal and try to open it. And that was how Sam learned what the ghost was protecting.

As his hand crept toward the ancient pottery, something akin to nails on a chalkboard shrieked in Sam's ear. "GET OUT!" the voice bellowed, "GET OUT!"

Well, wasn't this as stereotypical as it could get. And wouldn't it just figure that Dean had left him without any salt or iron. Sam's bad luck had reared its ugly head again.

Unfortunately for poor Sammy, his night was about to get a lot worse. Before Sam could defend himself, he felt the slithering sensation of the ghost entering his body. "No," Sam said. He struggled against the ghost and realized it was a losing battle. Apparently the ghost retained some of his hunter knowledge in the afterlife and used that to his advantage. After a few minutes, Sammy was in the backseat of his own mind, and the spook didn't have the decency to let him look out the window.

He wondered how long it would take Dean to figure out that he wasn't himself.

If, no _when_, he got out of this, he was going to kick Dean's ass for bringing whiskey on the job. Had he been sober, this never would have happened. He was pretty sure. Mostly sure. Kind of sure. Either way, Dean was going to be the recipient of Bitchface #1: the you're-such-an-asshole face.

On the upside, his arm didn't hurt anymore. Sam considered this to be a small item on the "pro" side of the situation. On the con side? He'd compound-fractured his arm, gotten stuck in a hunter's dungeon (_not a sex dungeon_) and been possessed by a ghost who was doing Chuck-knows-what with Sam's body.

This was not a good Friday night for Sam.

He felt constricted, like Kaa from _The Jungle Book_ was coiled around his body, even though he didn't really have a body right at the moment. He wriggled, well, as close to wriggling as a disembodied person could get, and managed to loosen the ghost's grip just a bit. Just enough for him to have a sliver of perception of the outside world. It wasn't like when Gadreel had taken the steering wheel of Sam's mind; that had felt like he was Edward Norton in _Fight Club. _

"Sammy?" he heard Dean say, "I found a ladder up here. It's probably ten-feet? Think that's enough?"

Sam knew it wasn't but he heard himself say, "That should be adequate. Thank you." Apparently, this hunter ghost was a long-lost cousin of Castiel, judging by his formal speech pattern.

"Do you think you could set it up if I drop it down there?"

Sam, though trapped inside his own mind, knew that would never work. His arm was broken in at least two places; there was no way he'd be able to set up a ladder one-handed. But he heard his voice say anyway, "Yes, of course."

"Mmkay. Hold on." Dean shuffled away and Sam strained to hear his brother clanging and banging around upstairs. Obviously his brother didn't pay enough attention to his speech patterns to realize that he didn't normally talk like he had a stick up his ass. Well, not since Gadreel had vacated the premises.

"_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus __omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursion infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…"_

He felt rumbling in his chest, deep and vulgar. "You cannot exorcise me," Sam's voice said, "I am no demon. Nor am I evil."

"I knew that," said Dean, "I also knew that a hunter—ghost or not—would recognize the Rituale Romanum. So tell me, what are you doing in my baby brother? Wow. That's a question that I never thought I'd ask."

So ghosts couldn't be exorcized. Well, that settled an argument that he and Dean had had almost a decade earlier.

"I am the guardian," said the ghost. Did his voice really sound that creepy or was that just because of the spirit possessing him?

"The guardian of what?" asked Dean.

The ghost hissed. It was a strange feeling to be so aware of the oxygen slowly being expunged of your own lungs, and to Sam's current powerless self, it felt like squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube.

"It cannot be named," said the ghost.

"Well, then, we promise not to touch anything and we'll just leave. So get the hell out of Sam."

"This body suits me for my guardianship."

"Know what else suits your guardianship? Being an incorporeal bastard."

"Being incorporeal does not suit the purpose of my guardianship."

"Get out of my brother, you son of a—," Dean was interrupted by the ghost screeching in Greek. Sam couldn't make out much other than the words _pithos _and _chamenos. _When…if he got his body back, he was going to be spending some time with the books. Greek was not his forte.

The extreme bizarreness of the situation was not lost on Sam. A hunter who collected Greek artifacts? Who spoke stilted language like Castiel? Not to mention there wasn't a lick of salt in the house. Just what kind of hunter was this guy anyway? Sam was certain that this involved that jar for some reason, but why would the ghost guard a _jar_? Yes, this was definitely a question for the books. And Google.

When the ghost finished screeching, Dean called down, "Hey, tough guy, you do realize that as long as you're in Sam's body, you're stuck, right?"

Sam realized that Dean had a point. As long as the ghost inhabited his body, he was stuck in this weird Greek dungeon. Sam also realized that if the ghost left his body, it could attack his brother. He wondered what Dean's end-game was. He just had to trust his brother and see what would happen next.

The ghost didn't leave his body, at least not right away. Dean said, "Take your time. I ain't going anywhere without my brother." The ghost wasn't happy; Sam could feel it. It wanted to strike out—to lash and slash and cut and _kill_—but more than that, Sam could feel its _desperation_. It was desperate to get them out of the house—_outoutoutoutoutOUT _it screamed in his mind, the voiceless shrieks echoing throughout Sam's skull like a bullet's ricochet. If this ghost had truly been a hunter in life like Garth had said—and Sam was beginning to doubt that more by the second—then it was the most unusual hunter they'd ever encountered. And that included Garth.

Sam couldn't tell how long this impasse lasted. Minutes? Hours? Days? Okay, probably not days. The ghost paced back and forth in his body, like a caged panther, restless and bristling with discontent.

"Get out," said Sam's voice.

"Get out of my brother first."

"You do not know what you ask," said the ghost, "My guardianship is more important than your brother."

"Not to me."

The ghost laughed, a bitter and inhuman sound that reminded Sam of a hyena's cackle. "I see the thoughts of your brother," said the ghost, "I see his mind. He can hear us, you know. Not like the time when he had the angel trapped within him."

Sam winced. Well, emotionally anyway. He knew, logically, that Dean had only accepted Gadreel's offer in order to save his life, but deep down, he still questioned everything Dean told him. Trusting his brother wasn't so easy anymore.

"Sam knows why I did that," said Dean, "And no amount of sorry is going to take back what I did. Get out of my brother."

"You protected him," said the ghost, "But perhaps it would have been better to let him die. Maybe that is what…_Samuel_…really wanted. That is what I can give him now. He can be at rest, and I can continue my guardianship."

"Your guardianship can kiss my sweet ass because that isn't going to happen."

"What will you do about it, mortal?"

_Mortal? _This was definitely not the average hunter. He sounded more like the Mummy every minute. A weird, Greek mummy.

"At least I'm not dead and playing _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_." quipped Dean.

The ghost chuckled. "Your humorous cultural references are just a cover for your fear. Sam knows it, so I know it. You are filled with fear. You should not fear me, mortal. I will not harm you so long as I can continue my guardianship."

"Again with this 'guardianship' crap. Know what? I call bullshit."

The ghost hissed. "My guardianship is more important than your puny life."

"Seriously?" said Dean. "Seriously? No offense to your incorporeal ass, but you don't know shit about my life. Me and Sammy? We've seen things, _done_ things. Some, I ain't too proud of, but others, well, look in Sammy's head and see if there's a single being in heaven and hell that don't know the name 'Winchester.' That's for a reason. You think I'm going to let some guardian tell me that he's keeping my brother? Well, that's just not how it works. Me and Sammy? We're a team. And I will kick your ass to hell's front door before I let you stay in Sam's body. So, for the last time: Get. Out."

The ghost's rage ripped through Sam's body, and the younger Winchester couldn't help but be reminded of a cornered cat lashing out with its claws. Then suddenly the rage was gone, replaced by the ripping of the ghost's presence from Sam's body. He was sure that there were claw marks in his mind, but so immense was his relief that the ghost had left his body that he almost forgot to warn Dean.

"Dean," he croaked. (Really? How had the ghost made him sound so evil and gravelly?)

A bag of rock salt fell next to him. "Circle up, Sammy," Dean said, "Let's keep that ghost out of you."

If Sam's arm had hurt before, it did so doubly now. When the ghost had left his body, he'd collapsed onto his bad arm and probably broken it even more, if that was possible. The Led Zeppelin tee that he'd used to bandage it was nowhere in sight, and the wound was encrusted with bits of wallpaper, dirt, and probably Greek mummy dust. Pushing aside the pain, Sam opened the bag of salt and quickly drew a circle around him with it. Well, it looked more like an oval, but he hoped it would work the same.

"Okay," said Sam, "But what about you?"

"Really, Sam? I've been up here salted the whole time. Just had to get the spook outta you and give him no one else to snuggle up with."

"Well, if you'd left me some salt in the first place—,"

"C'mon, Sam, are we really gonna argue about this? We screwed up. It's over. Let's just wait for Garth to get here."

"Fine."

Sam knew it wasn't fine. He also knew that his arm really _fucking hurt_ and he didn't want to argue with his brother when he could sit there and stew in self-pity. Except stewing wasn't Sam's style.

"Did you find the guy's remains?" asked Sam. It was a lame change of subject, but it did the trick.

"Nope," said Dean. "I've gone through the place. Twice. If this guy died here, his corpse spontaneously combusted."

"But then the ghost wouldn't be a problem."

"Shut up."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

Sam laughed. He couldn't help it. Sometimes his relationship with his brother dwindled down to nothing more than half-hugs and playground insults, but in the end, Dean was the only thing that consistently made sense to Sam, the only solvable equation in a calculus textbook from Mars.

He could almost hear Dean's smirk as he said, "Good to know some things never change, huh?"

"No," Sam said, "Some things never will."

_And all the girls say I'm pretty fly for a white guy. _

"Hey, Garth."

"You're kidding me," said Sam, "The Offspring? Really? I didn't even know you listened to anything post-1985."

"Shut up." Pause. "No, not you, Garth." Pause. "Yeah, well, the damn spook possessed Sam so we're—no he's not still possessed—yes, I'm sure—no, ice cream won't help—is that even a question—Garth—I—seriously—GARTH!"

Sam pictured his brother's face as he spoke on the phone with Garth and the sudden urge to cackle was almost unbearable. His brother had never been overly fond of the sort-of-Bobby-replacement, but he could only imagine Dean's impatience when trapped in a salt circle, slightly tipsy, with a crazed ghost on the loose.

"No, really, Garth, we're fine—yes, I know Sam has a compound fracture; I'm the one who told you—yes, I realize we screwed up." Pause. "Look can you give me an ETA or not?" Pause. "Oh." He heard Dean groan and assumed that Garth had delivered bad news.

"Dean, what's going on?"

"Garth's here."

"Why didn't he just say so?"

"Because he's Garth."

"Right."

A few minutes later the Winchesters heard the front door bang open and Latin chanting fill the silence. Sam was beginning to wonder if he should've let the ghost keep possessing him.

"Dean!" exclaimed Garth, "Good to see ya, man."

"Watch out for the—,"

Crash. Thud. Dust swarmed into Sam's face after Garth landed in the dungeon room a few feet away from him. Unfortunately for Garth, during his fall his feet had caught on one of the Greek tapestries. He was now swaddled in a centuries-old fabric that was probably more dust than material. To Garth's credit, his scream was a full octave lower than Sam would have expected.

"Sam? Garth? Are you alright?" Dean called down.

"I'm fine." Sam yelled back, "Not sure about Garth yet. I think he knocked himself out for a minute."

"I'm going to run out to Garth's car and see what I can get to help, okay? Stay in the salt circle, Sammy."

Sam huffed. As if Dean would follow the same advice. "Okay," he said reluctantly.

The lump of musty fabric that was Garth wiggled slightly.

"Garth?"

Garth groaned and rolled over, further entangling himself in the disgusting tapestry. "That floor is bad," Garth said.

"We know," said Sam, "That's how I ended up down here in the first place. Are you hurt?"

Garth shook his head. "No, just bruised I think. This fabric must've broken my fall, thank God for that."

Sam wasn't sure that Garth should thank anyone that he'd gotten wrapped up in the Shroud of Hepatitis C, but he just said, "Maybe you should come over here. There's a rogue spook on the loose. I have some more salt.

"Okay."

Garth attempted to unroll himself from the musty fabric, but wasn't having much success. After falling over for the third time, he looked at Sam with big pleading eyes. "I may need help," he admitted.

Sam was reluctant to leave his salt circle, but in the end he crawled over to Garth because he knew the skinny guy would do the same for him. He tugged on the tapestry, mentally vomiting as his fingers touched it, and Garth wriggled, trying to free himself. However, he inadvertently freed skeletal remains that had also been wrapped in the cloth. The skeleton promptly fell on Garth. Garth screamed again—at a much higher octave, Sam noticed—and jerked away from the skeleton, causing the living man and the remains to become horizontally cheek-to-cheek. If Dean could only see this, Sam thought, he would have a half dozen "horizontal tango" quips to throw at poor Garth.

Then Sam realized what, or actually _who_, the skeleton belonged to. "Garth, I need you to get away from that skeleton right now."

"I'm _trying_."

"No, damn it Garth, right NOW!"

Recognition dawned on the man's face. "Oh," he breathed. He continued fighting the damn tapestry and finally Sam just reached out with his good arm and yanked as hard as he could. He heard the fabric rip, and a great cloud of what really probably was skeletal dust poofed into the air, but Garth was free.

"Wow," said Garth, "I guess your biceps aren't just for show."

"What?"

"I said—,"

Garth didn't finish his sentence because at that precise moment the air chilled around them and Sam saw the other man flinch violently. Oh, no. Sam knew what that meant. "This is a better vessel for my guardianship," hissed the ghost in Garth's voice. Sam noticed that the ghost was trying to do the deep raspy voice with Garth's vocal cords, but it wasn't succeeding very well. "This vessel is not damaged," it said.

Of course, Dean would be gone at this moment, when Garth was possessed and Sam had located the ghost's remains. He had salt, but no lighter, so there wouldn't be any salt n' burns…yet. He retreated to his salt circle, feeling slightly cowardly.

"Will you hide behind a line of salt for all of eternity?" asked the ghost, "My offer still stands: if you allow me to continue my guardianship, you may leave in peace."

"That's not going to happen," said Sam, "Garth may be a little odd, but he's a friend. You can't have him."

The ghost chuckled. "You will not stay so stubborn forever, Sam Winchester. I've seen your mind. I have seen the worst of you, and you will abandon him if it saves your life. You are not your brother. You are not the Righteous Man. You have no conviction. You are empty."

The spook's words hit him like a punch to the stomach, leaving him scrambling for words and unsteady on his feet. "You can't have him," he said again. He wished his voice sounded more even, not feeble like an old man's.

The ghost laughed. "You cannot stop me. The guardianship must be maintained."

The guardianship. What was the guardianship? Sam realized too late that he said that aloud.

"I was made guardian by the sons of Gaea, and in her name I have sworn the most binding of oaths," it said, "My guardianship has lasted since before Helios first chased his chariot across the sky, and so it shall remain until Gaea release me."

"So all this stuff is Greek," Sam muttered, "I knew it."

The ghost moved closer to Sam, and the Winchester could see that Garth's eyes had glossed to white completely. He knelt down and began to blow on the line of salt that surrounded Sam, destroying the circle. Sam looked for the bag of salt and realized that it was outside the circle and too far away for him to reach. Where was Dean? This was about the time when Dean was supposed to jump in last-minute and do something rash and irritating to distract the ghost. The ghost stood up and stared at him with Garth's pupil-less eyes. "I have lived thousands of years," it told him, "I will live thousands more. No matter your name, you will not move me from my purpose."

"Oh yeah?" called Dean's voice, "Then why did you die in the first place?"

There was Dean, just in time to be brash and irritating. The ghostly Garth glared up in Dean's general direction. "It was not my choice to perish. I was cursed by a witch. My form decayed but my soul lived on. Now that I have a new form, I will not make the same mistake again. The oath cannot be broken."

"Hello? You're still dead." Dean waved his arm across the opening in the floor, and Sam could see something glistening in his brother's palm. A cigarette lighter. Time to salt and burn. "And you know what else? I think you've still forgotten that you are stuck down in that hole unless you have some spooky guardian friends that will come haul your ass out. By the time you figure out how to get out of there, my brother and I will have kicked your sorry ass. Now, Garth, he's not exactly what I'd call a good hunter, but he's a friend, and I'm not leaving him behind to deal with your stick-in-the-ass personality. So, dead guy, you may want to rethink your options."

As Dean taunted the ghost, Sam edged toward the skeleton. He picked up the bag of salt and discreetly poured some on the extremely-rotted corpse. He flashed Dean a quick thumbs-up and stepped in front of the ghost-Garth. The ghost screeched and pushed Sam on his broken arm. Sam winced in pain, but still managed to catch the lighter that Dean tossed down to him. He heard his brother toss down the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, which shattered on and around the corpse. Sam flipped open the lighter and tossed it onto the tattered tapestry-covered skeleton.

The ghost screamed as it was ripped from Garth's body. The sound was a cacophony of discordant sound and despair. Unlike other ghosts the Winchesters had salted and burned, this one did not scream and waste away in a shower of flames and ash. Well, it screamed, but instead of disintegrating, the ghost folded in on itself, like cells dividing, until nothing remained.

"Well, that's not normal," Dean remarked.

Sam agreed. Nothing was normal about this case, nothing at all. He fully intended on doing some research about this "guardianship," but for now, his arm really hurt. "Dean, can we get outta here?" he asked.

"Sure thing, Sammy boy. But first, you have to wake up Sleeping Beauty."

Garth had passed out face-down into the basement floor. He'd probably broken his nose. Sam rolled him over, carefully using his good arm, and slapped him lightly on the face. "Hey, wake up," he said, "It's time to go."

"No, mommy, just ten more minutes."

"_Mommy?_" He could hear Dean's laughter reverberating off the walls. He slapped Garth again. "Wake up."

Garth peeked one eye open. "I don't like this dream. You're not Xena."

"You're right. I'm not. Get up."

Garth got up, and Dean lowered down the rope ladder that Garth had brought with him. "This isn't ideal," said Dean, "But it'll have to do. Garth, you climb up here, and then I'll climb down and help Sam."

Garth did as he was told. When Dean got down to the dungeon, he had brought down another rope. "I have a feeling I'm going to have to pull your gigantor ass outta here," he explained. Sam tried to climb the rope ladder, but his broken arm wouldn't allow him to get very far. "Yeah, pulley system it is," Dean said. He tied one end of the rope to Sam and climbed back upstairs to help Garth pull his brother out.

On a whim, Sam grabbed the jar from the pedestal. He cradled it close to his body as Dean and Garth pulled him out of the dungeon/basement. Finally, he flopped onto the floor, and Dean pulled him out of the room, away from any other rotten floorboards. "Diet," Dean wheezed, "Diet."

"Shut up."

Garth said, "I think we should go to the hospital. Sam's arm doesn't look so good."

It was true. Sam's arm looked terrible—like it had gotten in a fight with a lawn mower and lost. "It does hurt," he admitted.

"Like a bitch?"

Sam gritted his teeth. "Yes," he said, "like bitch."

As Dean and Garth put away their equipment in the Impala and Garth's truck, Sam looked back at the no-longer-haunted house. He still held that jar in his good hand. He knew the adrenaline would be wearing off soon, and when it did, he'd probably pass out from the pain of his fractured arm. He wondered if the ghost was really guarding something important, or if it was just the ramblings of a recently-departed mad man? "I suppose we'll never know now," he muttered. He looked at the jar. There was a short inscription on the lid. Definitely ancient Greek. After he got his arm sorted out, he'd work on translating it.

His brother came up next to him. "You okay?" he asked.

"My arm is still broken. I was possessed again. By a ghost. That house—it has more questions than answers."

"C'mon, man, it's not so bad. It's just a bad night, okay?" Dean looked uncomfortable. Neither Winchester liked what the ghost had been saying about them, but neither was willing to admit it. "Let's just forget about it? We screwed up. It's nobody's fault."

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves," Garth piped in.

Sam and Dean stared at him blankly. "What the hell does that mean?" Dean asked.

Garth looked embarrassed. "Um, Shakespeare? Julius Caesar?" Dean looked at him blankly. "Seriously? The most famous writer in the English language? No? Nothing?"

"I _know_ who damn Shakespeare is," grumbled Dean, "I saw that one version…with the dude from _Titanic._"

And with Dean still grumbling about how "stupid old dead white guys wrote boring books anyway," the Winchesters got in the Impala and followed Garth to a nearby doctor that Garth swore would "fix Sam right up."

The house, now empty of all spooks, loomed at the top of the hill, like a warning or a bad memory, until it shimmered, folded in on itself, and disappeared.

END PART ONE.

**Author's Note: This story began as a Christmas gift for my blogger. It was supposed to be short and smutty and then the plot velociraptors attacked and here I am, 30,000 words in with no end in sight. *sigh* A very special thank you to my beta, Jacksqueen16, who keeps me on the straight and narrow and calls me on my BS. Go look her up.**


	2. Lazy Saturday

Lazy Saturday

Part 2 of _Good Things Lost_

Dean hated the plastic chairs in hospital lobbies. Nothing about them was comfortable, and damn it all if they didn't make his ass numb for twenty minutes after he stood up. He'd been sitting in this one for near four hours now, too lazy to move and too tired to care about the impending numbness in his behind. It was nearing 4 o'clock in the morning, and Dean had been awake for the past 20 hours, with no sleep in sight.

Sam had been in surgery for a few hours, and Dean was expecting the doc to pop into the lobby at any minute with an update. A broken arm wasn't the worst injury Sam had ever had—the trials a few years ago had put him on Death's doorstep. Quite literally. Yet being in the hospital never got any easier for Dean, and he couldn't remember a single good thing had happened to him near a doctor. He supposed that if he'd gone the normal suburbia route—gotten married, had 2.5 kids, adopted a golden retriever—that a hospital would be filled with memories of new lives, scraped knees, and colds that seemed a little too much like bronchitis. It didn't matter now; John Winchester had shot down that possible future a long time ago.

He shifted a little, and the cold plastic chair squeaked in resistance. He thought about dragging the chair to the parking lot and using it for target practice, but he figured that while it would relieve some stress, it would also land him in the Shrink Tank wearing the bland pajamas assigned to all the psych patients. Instead he leaned back and hit his head against the wall repeatedly. Bonk. Bonk. Bonk. A woman sitting across from him gave him a glare, but said nothing.

Nobody in any ER waiting room he'd ever visited had ever said anything about his obnoxiousness. Everyone tiptoed around feelings like they were doing a damn ballet, but Dean knew that it wasn't Swan Lake, it was real life, and tiptoeing only made him more bitter inside. So the third time the woman gave him a dirty look, he snapped, "You got a problem, lady?" Dean wasn't the kind of man to tiptoe. He stomped.

The woman shook her head and looked away. "You keep doin' that ballet," he muttered to himself.

Why did Sam have to go and break his arm? His brother was so damn klutzy. Why'd he walk through a rotten floorboard? Sam was the smart Winchester—everyone knew that—but sometimes he was so goddamn idiotic that Dean wondered how his brother dressed himself in the morning. He knew that Sam often wondered the same about him. Their co-dependency was the stuff of legend, he was sure of it.

"Mr. Winchester?" A middle-aged man in surgical scrubs approached Dean.

"Yeah, that's me," said Dean.

The doctor—Dean supposed he was Sam's surgeon—flipped open the medical file that he carried with him. "Your brother is out of surgery," he said, "We were able to repair most of the damage from the compound fracture and set the arm. However, your brother is going to have his arm casted for about eight weeks minimum, and then most likely six months of physical therapy after that. This, of course, is if his arm heals in the ideal manner. In a few weeks, we will know if he needs another surgery or not."

The doctor was a short man, at least eight inches shorter, and Dean towered over him. This must be what Sam felt like daily. "So you're saying Sam's arm is useless for at least eight months?" Dean's voice was taut with frustration.

The doctor winced. "Barring a miracle, yes, that is exactly what I'm saying," he replied.

Dean had a friend who could perform miracles, but he wasn't crossing his fingers that his friend would pop by anytime soon. Or ever again.

"You can see your brother now," the doctor told him.

Dean followed the doctor to the post-op recovery wing. His baby brother was propped up on a wobbly-looking hospital bed and was being spoon-fed Jell-O by a cute redheaded nurse. The nurse was all googly eyes for the younger Winchester, but Dean could tell that the anesthesia hadn't quite worn off yet since Sam had trouble forming complete words, let alone sentences.

"Just one more bite," said the cute nurse in baby voice, "Just one weetle bite."

"Yeah, c'mon Sammy," said Dean, "Just one _weetle bite._"

Sam's drugs may not have worn off entirely, but that didn't stop him from giving Bitchface #3.

"How long till he can leave the hospital?" Dean asked the nurse.

She blushed. "Well, I think the doctor wants to keep him for observation. He's worried about infection. And we haven't been able to cast his break yet because of swelling from the surgery. You're looking at a Sunday discharge at the earliest."

"Mmmnnnghhh," said Sam.

Dean patted his hand. "Don't you worry, Sammy, this nurse will take good care of you."

"Mmmmnnnggghhh! Mmmnnnggghh!" said Sam.

The nurse reached in with more Jell-O. "You want more?" she asked as she pushed the spoon toward his mouth.

Dean knew how much Sam hated green Jell-O and for a moment he contemplated leaving Sam's tastebuds to a terrible fate, but then he remembered the time Sam had stopped him from hitting on a married woman who had a husband the size of a Golem. He figured he owed Sam so he said, "Actually, I think what my brother's trying to say is that he'd like to leave the hospital today."

The nurse's face fell. Oh boy, another woman's heart stolen by Sam's puppy dog eyes. He wanted to say, "Trust me, it's for the best—all Sam's girlfriends end up dead or demonic or both." He figured that wouldn't go over so well—with the nurse or with Sam.

"Unfortunately that's not possible. Doctor's orders," she said, "But how about I get you some ice cream?" She scurried away, and Dean wondered if the world were different if she and Sam would get together. Sure, Sam was a giant moose of a man and the nurse was a Keebler elf, but he'd seen stranger couples.

Sam's arm was bandaged and slung in a sling. It didn't look as bad as it had when Dean had first pulled him out of the decrepit basement he'd fallen into, but it didn't look good either. When Garth and he had first brought Sam to the hospital—the only one within 100 miles that would admit Sam, no questions asked thanks to Garth's connections—he'd overheard the ER doctor telling a nurse that it was one of the grossest breaks he'd ever seen. Dean supposed that Sam being possessed by a crazy spook and rolling around in a musty basement didn't help the break any.

Dean poked Sam's shoulder. "That hurt?" he asked.

"Mmnnghh bbbssstttrrr," Sam moaned.

Dean smirked. He spoke enough of Sam's language of Percocet and sleepiness to understand Sam's insult. "Watch it," he said, "We have the same mom."

"Mmnnnghhh," Sam said again and promptly fell back asleep.

Dean sat by Sam's bedside, listening to his brother's borderline snoring, until the nurse reappeared with a giant dish of chocolate ice cream. She looked disappointed that Sam had fallen asleep, but kindly offered it to Dean instead.

"No, thank you," he said, "I think you might need the sugar rush more than I do."

She yawned and said, "You're probably right." She checked Sam's vitals one last time. She looked longingly at Sam and blushed when she saw that Dean had noticed.

"It's the puppy dog eyes, right?" he asked.

She blushed again. "It's the hair," she confessed.

Well, that was a new one.

"You might as well go home and get some sleep," the nurse told him, "Your brother won't be waking up again anytime soon."

The last time Dean had been told that, he'd put out an APB to every halo-wearer around the world (not an action he'd be repeating in the future). This time however, the angels were shut up in their newly-reclaimed heaven, and the only feathery bastard Dean wanted around was too busy throwing a welcome-home party to answer his damn prayers. Dean pushed those thoughts aside. He was too damn tired to think about Cas right now.

"You're right," he said to the nurse, "I'll come back this afternoon when he's awake."

The drive back to the motel was quiet. Dean didn't even turn on Baby's radio, preferring instead to listen to the wind whoosh through the open window, a constantly stirring noise that always helped him think. He didn't like seeing his brother in a hospital, didn't like seeing the Gigantor laying around helpless and broken. He'd come too close to losing Sam so many times—one would think he'd get used to it—but each time he found there was a new section of his soul ready to get ripped open and tossed through a shredder. The only thing he really prayed for nowadays was that he'd go before Sammy, because a life without his brother was more terrifying than anything he'd ever faced in hell or in purgatory.

He opened the motel room door to see Garth passed out face-down on his bed. He thought about waking him up and making him sleep in the other bed, but the guy _had _ driven three hours to save their sorry asses and he'd been possessed by the spook just like Sam had. He supposed Garth deserved undisturbed sleep, even if that meant that Dean didn't get the bed by the door. He snagged an extra pillow from under Garth's head; he'd given up his bed and he wasn't about to give up his extra pillow (and said extra pillow was definitely _not _for snuggling with.) He kicked off his shoes and settled onto the bed, too exhausted to undress.

He expected sleep to take him immediately but he wasn't that lucky. The sun was well on its way to rising and sleep taunted him like that busty blonde he'd met in the bar last week. He sighed and rolled over. He didn't want to think about that blonde, or the brunette from the week before, or any other woman who'd come onto him in the last six months. The one person he _did_ want to think about was off-limits, but in the early morning hours his brain seemed to forget that.

The last time he saw Castiel was the day the angel had gotten his Grace back. Cas had been right: his Grace had been the key ingredient to closing the gates of Heaven, and it was the key to unlocking them as well. Even though he had been sort-of mortal and sporting some other angel's Grace, Castiel had fought off the King of the Assbutts, Bartholomew, Metatron and a boatload of other heavenly dickwads to steal back the tiny blue vial.

He remembered Castiel breaking the vial. The glass shattered to the floor, jagged and repulsive. Then the Grace curling around Castiel, a spiral of angelic mojo. Mostly, he remembered Castiel's eyes at that moment, and how the blue in his eyes matched the blue of his Grace, and how Dean never wanted to look away. He'd reached out to touch the angel that had pulled him out of hell, and Cas had flinched. _Flinched. _

Dean had pulled away in more ways than one.

"I'm going home," Castiel had said, "I can fix this, Dean. I can make it better."

And then the angel was gone.

That had been six months ago, and everyday Dean expected to wake up to Castiel's invasive stare and ignorance of personal space, and everyday he woke up disappointed.

Sam and Bobby and everyone else they'd ever met assumed that Dean was emotionally constipated, that he didn't know his heart from his ass. The truth was that Dean _did_ know how he felt about Castiel, and he also knew that admitting it to Sam or anyone else didn't make it any more or less true.

These thoughts tormented Dean until the sun was already high in the sky, and when Dean did finally fall into an uneasy sleep, he dreamed of trench coats and blue eyes.

When Dean woke up several hours later, it was Garth who waited for him instead of a trench-coated angel. "Good morning," said Garth, "Errr…afternoon now I guess. I've already been to check on Sam."

"How is he?" asked Dean.

Garth shrugged. "He's still high as a kite on Percoset," Garth told him, "But he's got a cute nurse watching out for him, so I don't think he cares too much."

So the cute nurse was still babysitting Sam. Dean would wager half a pie that her shift had ended hours ago, but had stuck around in the hopes of volunteering a sponge bath for his brother.

"I told Sam you'd visit him later after you had slept and ate," said Garth, "I saw an open-air market close by. I think I saw a pie stand."

Dean had woken up with the intention of visiting Sam first thing, but now that Garth had mentioned pie…

"Let's do this," he told Garth. He grabbed the keys to Baby. "I fly; you buy," he said.

The open-air market was a hodgepodge of organic farmers and hipster artists, but Dean could smell the pie as soon as he set foot on the premises. "Smells like fresh-baked pecan." He bee-lined straight for the pie stand with Garth squealing behind him, "Ooohhh kettle corn! Hey, Dean, you want some?"

Garth could keep his kettle corn; there was pie to be had. Dean told him as much. He found the pie stand—he was right, the pecan was fresh-baked—and bought an entire cherry pie from an older woman with kind eyes named Annie. "You sure got an appetite," she said with a laugh as he shoveled a bite into his mouth as soon as she handed him the pie.

"Ifffsss derrrrshhuss," he told her between mouthfuls. He moaned a little to emphasize his point.

She laughed at him again. "Glad you enjoy it," she said, "Come back anytime. I'm here every Saturday."

If the Winchesters were still in town the next Saturday, Dean would bet his left ass cheek that he'd be here for another pie.

He carried his pie with him as he browsed the rest of the market. He mostly ignored the strange stares he got as he munched on his pie. He responded to the more aggressive dirty looks by shoving an extra-large bite in his mouth and chewing with his mouth open. He could practically hear Sam's voice in his head saying, "Oh, that's really mature."

He stopped by a small bead-and-tapestry covered stall that had what looked like an Enochian sigil embroidered into a tapestry. Dean decided that some hipster probably thought it looked "artsy" and decided to use it as decoration. They couldn't possibly know what it meant.

"Can I interest you in a reading?" said a woman from behind him.

Dean turned around to see a young woman—she couldn't be more than 21—holding a deck of hand-painted tarot cards. "A reading?" she asked again, gesturing to the cards.

"Um, no thanks," said Dean. He didn't believe in that hocus pocus.

"Okay then," she said, and sat down at a small table and picked up her book. _The Time Traveler's Wife_.

Dean excused himself and went searching for Garth, who he found at a stall browsing through _Xena: Warrior Princess_ merchandise. "Look, they have a replica of Xena's sword!"

Dean snorted. "What kind of geek buys replica swords?"

Garth looked a little hurt. "Oh, you're right," he said. He put the sword down. "It's lame."

Dean once again lamented the fact that God or Chuck or whoever hadn't bothered to give him a filter for his big mouth. "I didn't mean," he began.

"No, you're right. Where would I put it anyway? It's not like I have a real house."

He clapped Garth on the shoulder. "C'mon, man, let's get you some kettle corn."

They were standing in line for kettle corn—Garth blathering on about how he once tried to make kettle corn as a child and ended up burning down his aunt's house—when Dean saw, from the corner of his eye, a teenage girl get snatched from between two stalls. He groaned inwardly. Damn it, this was supposed to be a day-off after last night's fuck-up at Aristotle's haunted house, but he couldn't ignore what he'd just seen.

"Garth," he said quietly, "We have a problem. Do we have any weapons?"

"What?"

"Do we have anything we could use to gank a son of a bitch?"

"Um…"

"Find something and meet me behind that building." He pointed to where the girl had been taken. He took off before Garth could reply.

He snuck around the corner to see two middle-aged men arguing over the girl. She was being tug-of-warred between them, and Dean was reminded instantly of two lions fighting over a piece of meat. Turns out that guess was pretty accurate.

"I saw her first!" Interesting. Dean wouldn't have expected a voice that high to come from a man that…hairy.

"But I caught her!" said the other one. He reminded Dean of Wreck It Ralph.

Vampire Cousin It flashed his fangs. "I don't share my food," he said.

Shit. Vampires. In the daytime? Either they were very young or very old. Dean hoped it was the former. The girl screamed and struggled, but a 100-pound girl was no match for two full grown men…err…vampires. The two vampires continued arguing over the girl for a few minutes before deciding that they could each take an arm and bleed her dry.

Where the hell was Garth? How long did it take to find something to stake and/or decapitate a vampire with? It was now obvious that the vamps were newbies; they were now arguing about which vein had the best blood (really?) and what would the Vampire Lestat do if he were them (REALLY?). He snuck closer to the vampires. He couldn't wait much longer now or they would eat the girl. Where the hell was Garth!

He decided to make his move. He didn't know what his move was, but he was going to make it. This would be what Sam called one of his "you're one lucky dumbass" moments. Unless he didn't make it through this. Then he would just be a dumbass.

He strode out of his hiding place—creeping around wasn't his style—and tapped Wreck It Ralph on the shoulder. "Hey fangs," he said, "I bet I'll make a better lunch."

The vampire frowned. He said, "Sorry, you're not really my type. Frank here plays for both teams though."

"That's not what I meant." But the vampire had already turned back to the girl. Seriously? Did this vamp just snub him? "Hey," he said, "Big guy. Hands…err…fangs off the girl."

Wreck It Ralph turned around. The dude was probably taller than Sam, judging by how small he was making Dean feel. So much for vampires between sleek and sexy like Ferraris. Both Wreck It Ralph and the Vampire Cousin It were moving in on him. If the girl were smart, she would take this opportunity to save herself. She wasn't smart. Instead she ran screaming toward Vampire Cousin It. She beat on his back, ferocious but, in the end, harmless. All she succeeded in doing was turning the vampire's attention back onto her.

Before the vampire could get to her, Dean kicked him in the knee. Hard. Dean was wearing steel-toed boots. Even if you were undead, that had to hurt. The vampire flinched. The kick slowed him down, but since he wasn't human, he was still standing. Dean kicked him again, this time in the groin, and then Wreck It Ralph decided to join the party. Wreck It Ralph was an accurate name for the vamp, Dean decided as pain exploded in his skull. The vampire had a wrecking ball for a fist.

When Wreck It Ralph pulled back for a second punch, Dean knew that this one would K.O. him. He prayed that the girl had enough sense to run and that Garth was somewhere close by with a grenade launcher.

Neither happened.

Instead the girl fought back against Cousin It. She bit, scratched, kicked, _pulled hair_, everything a teenage girl could do to fight dirty. Cousin It wasn't interested in a mangled dinner because he let her continue to inflict minimal damage on him.

And Garth, well, Garth showed up. To be honest, Dean didn't think he'd ever been happier to see the skinny dude, although he wondered why Garth had bothered to wear a helmet to a vamp fight. He looked like he was boarding the short bus instead of preparing for combat.

"Hey tough guy," Garth said, "Come and get it."

Cousin It dropped the girl and she ran off to safety. Wreck It Ralph turned around, and before he could pummel Garth with his wrecking-ball fists, Garth pulled a sword out from behind his back (the helmet was to prevent Garth from Mike Tyson-ing his own ears). He held the sword in both hands, yelled, "AYE-YAI-YAI-YAI-YAI!" and lopped the vampire's head clean off.

Cousin It growled and charged at Garth. Garth, brave though he was, was unprepared for someone the size of a mountain troll charging at him. The small hunter ate pavement, and the sword clattered away from him. Cousin It decided that Garth was a human bag of Cheet-Os and began snacking on his arm.

Dean was still a little woozy from Wreck It Ralph's sucker punch, but he got to his feet and grabbed the sword. He chopped off the second vamp's head—it took him a couple swings to completely detach it—and grimaced when he saw that Garth was covered in vampire guts and sludge. "That is disgusting," he said. He helped the smaller man off the ground and dodged a hug. He wasn't prissy but he didn't want to be covered in vampire remains either.

Garth grinned. "Xena's sword is so awesome."

"Okay, Warrior Princess, you've got vampire in your hair."

"Gross." He wiped at the sludge and ended up smearing it all over his sleeve. "Ewww." The look on his face was pitiful; it was the kind of look Sam used to get when Dean made him eat broccoli (not that Dean ever made himself eat it).

Dean laughed. He was holding a Xena sword, Garth was covered in vampire, there were two decapitated bodies next to them, and all Dean could do was laugh at the look on Garth's face. He hadn't laughed like that in a long time, and he felt something uncoil within him, like he had been a walking talking grenade and someone had just stuck the pin back in. "C'mon, Xena," he said, "Let's get your kettle corn."

If Dean thought he'd received strange looks before when he was walking around munching on an entire pie, it was nothing compared to now as Garth walked around the market covered in Vampire Cousin it. It didn't seem to bother the other man too much; he snacked on kettle corn and rattled off way more _Xena_ trivia than any one person should know. Considering the man had saved his ass with a replica sword, Dean kept the snide remarks to himself. Well, most of them. Sam would be proud.

Again he found himself by the psychic's stall, and with an inward groan he heard Garth ask, "How much for a reading?"

She spoke her prices. $10 for a 3-card reading. $15 for 5. And so on. Dean was tempted to hand her money for not turning away two dudes covered in blood and guts.

"I wanna do it," said Garth.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Really, man? You haven't had enough of the 'supernatural' for one day?" He included a strong dose of sarcasm in the world "supernatural."

Garth gave him a stern look. "Don't be a party pooper," he said, "We deserve a bit of fun."

Dean could have argued that his idea of fun didn't include having a stranger blindly guess the most intimate details of his life, but he kept his mouth shut. Let Garth have his "fun."

Garth's first card was The Fool. Dean tried, and failed, not to laugh. His second card was the Six of Wands. His third, the Knight of Pentacles. Dean didn't pay much attention to what the tarot card reader said; he heard words like "victory" and "possibilities" and "persistent" but mostly Dean focused on playing "Angry Birds" on his phone which made him, well, angry. The damn pigs with their damn faces. Even Crowley didn't piss him off as much.

"Would you like a reading?"

"Huh?" He hadn't realized that she'd finished Garth's cards so soon. "Um, no thanks."

She pursed her lips. "It's not what you think; the tarot cards do not tell me secrets or the future. There are no specifics. Rather, think of them as interpretations. You choose what you want to believe."

"I don't believe any of it."

She looked a little sad when he sad that. She said, "Let me do a reading for you. If you don't get anything from it, you don't have to pay me."

Dean wavered. He really didn't want to do it, but Garth was looking at him so expectantly and he could just hear Sam's voice in his head saying, "Dude, it's just a psychic." He decided to nut up and do it. He sat across from the woman, who looked like she hadn't eaten in days. As he watched her shuffle the deck of cards, he was afraid she would snap her wrists from that alone. She placed the deck in front of him and said, "Cut the deck." He did so.

She said to him, "This is where you start believing in something more than coincidence or decide that this is pointless. It's really up to you. What I can tell you is that you cut the deck to these cards I am going to deal. Not me. Whatever these cards are, you could have cut to any other point in the deck and the result would have been different." She poised her hand over the deck to flip over the first card. "So really, it comes down to whether you believe in fate or coincidence."

She flipped the first card. "The Star," she said, "This represents your past." The second card was the Three of Swords, upside down. She frowned a little and hesitated. "This is your present." She murmured something to herself and flipped over the last card. "The Lovers," she said. She looked Dean in the eye, and her stare felt like Alistair's whips had when they'd stripped away his flesh and laid his muscles and tendons and soul bare on Hell's rack. "Are you in a relationship?" she asked.

Dean shook his head. "Not with my job," he joked.

She didn't laugh. "Anyone you're interested in?" she asked.

"No." Yes.

"Hmmm." She put her hand on the first card, which was of a naked woman entering a pool of water, surrounded by stars. "This is your past," she said, "The Star is perhaps the most positive of the cards. The Star is a beacon of hope, of faith—that you believed in something greater than yourself—and you allowed it to guide you." She looked at him pointedly. "But this is your past. You've lost your faith. You have no hope for yourself, and without that, you have no hope for anything else."

Well, this was uncomfortable.

She must have noticed his discomfort because she said, "The Star doesn't have to stay in the past. Such things are fluid, you know. Hope can be found again. However…" Her voice trailed off as she looked at his second card. The Three of Swords was a picture of three swords stabbing through a heart. "Do you consider yourself to be a logical person?" she asked him.

Garth laughed. "Not him," he said, "Dean is the hot-headed type."

She pursed her lips again. "I asked Dean," she said, "Well, do you? Perhaps I should say it differently. Do you let yourself feel your emotions, or do you keep them locked up in a box in the back of your mind?"

"I know how I feel," Dean said, with just a tinge of stubbornness in his voice.

"But do you let yourself feel them?"

"What has that got to do with the card?"

She sighed. "The Three of Swords depicts a heart being stabbed for good reason. It represents someone using logic or power to control their emotions because they are afraid of pain. At some point in your life—probably the same time when you had the loss of faith that the Star card represents—you were hurt, and deeply. Your heart, your faith was broken, and you carry that pain with you even today." She gave him that same look, the one that felt like she was rubbing his soul with sandpaper. "You can't bury this forever, Dean. Pain is a part of life. We learn from it, use it to grow."

She picked up the third card. Two lovers, intertwined, stared back at him, and brought back the same pang he felt whenever he thought of a pair of blue eyes and a khaki trench coat. "When you look at this card, what do you think of?" she asked him.

In spite of himself, he liked this girl's lack of bullshit. She got to the point, and she got there quickly. "I think of someone who isn't around anymore," he admitted.

"Hmmmm." She looked at the card again. "This is your future," she said, "But as you well know, the future is not definite. What we do today affects tomorrow. This person—will they come back?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Probably not," Dean said. He sighed. God, sometimes it just hurt so fucking much. He didn't know why he was talking about his damn feelings with a stranger when he couldn't even talk about them with Sam. There were so many words that died in his throat, quick and brutal deaths, as if they'd been stabbed by Ruby's knife. How could he explain his more-than-friendly feelings for a gender-neutral angel who was stuck in a man's body? How could he tell her that every fucking atom in his body was put together by this angel? How could he say that this angel knew him, literally, inside and out? How did he explain that every goddamn part of him—from his brain to his bone marrow—missed Castiel so much that he ached, as if every inch of his emotions had been rubbed raw from wanting, yearning, craving Castiel's presence? Dean knew he couldn't explain it, knew that he'd sound crazy if he tried. So he bit his tongue and asked the girl to tell him what else the card meant.

"The Lovers does not have to represent a romantic relationship," she explained, "But in your case, I definitely think it does, at least in part. This card almost always represents a choice. Most of the readings I do—it is the choice between an old lover and new one. For you, um, I think it means something a little more complicated, am I right?"

Dean nodded.

She motioned back to his first two cards. "Your three cards are connected, much more connected than most of the readings I do. Your faith, your hope, is trapped by your present pain. This card, the Lovers, this could be the choice you're presented with now. To move beyond the present, and move on to a possible future with this person you are interested in and to get back the hope of the Star. That is one possible meaning. It could also mean you may have to choose between two people. I think that is less likely, but still a possibility. Regardless, you have to deal with this pain that the Three of Swords represents or any future meaning of the Lovers won't exist." She reached across the table and took Dean's hand in her own. Her hand was tiny and frail and brittle, and Dean thought she might break at any moment. "You could be so happy, Dean," she told him, "And I'm not saying that as a tarot card reader, but as a person who can _see_ you. You could be, if you wanted. The choice is yours. That's what the Lovers represent, in my opinion." She let go of his hand. "Well, I guess that's it, unless you have a question to ask me?"

Dean had many questions, but he opted to shake his head instead and tell her, "No. Think I'm good." He opened his wallet and pulled out $10. "Here. Take this," he said, "Not that I believe any of this, but I don't want you to work for free, and honestly, you look like you could use it."

She took the money. "Thank you, Dean," she said.

He held out his hand for her to shake. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Hope," she replied.

"Nice to meet you, Hope."

"Yes, nice to meet you," piped in Garth. Dean had almost forgotten that he was there.

"One more thing," Hope said, "And this one's on the house. This person who left you? You should call them. Sometimes all you need to do is ask them to come back."

Dean had done everything short of begging Castiel to come back. The angel definitely didn't have his ears on, or if he did, it was all quiet on the western front. He didn't know what to say to her, so he thanked Hope again and left.

Dean decided to go back to the pie stand and buy another cherry pie. He had intended to share it with Sam, but as he looked at that tin full of baked heaven, he decided to buy a second one for Sam and Garth to share. That was generous, right? When he and Garth arrived at the Impala, he took a good look at the other man and said, "So, motel stop before the hospital?"

"Why?" asked Garth.

"Cause we look like we murdered Edward Cullen."

"Oh."

When they arrived back at the motel and he was waiting for Garth to finish cleaning Vampire Cousin It off of himself—and wasn't that a weird sentence to have in his head—he picked up the jar that Sam had brought back from their last hunt. "I want to research it," he'd said, "There was something weird about that house."

There had indeed been something weird about that house, and Dean wasn't thinking about the stilted conversation he and his brother had had about the angel. The whole set up was strange. No rock salt in a hunter's house? Creepy dungeon? A ghost that possessed his brother in order to guard something? It was too strange for Dean to put the puzzle pieces together; when things got weird, he made a joke or shot something. Sometimes both. Sammy did the research.

The jar his brother had brought back in the "interest of research" was kind of…dull. Dean couldn't see anything special about it. It was just a brass jar. Urn. Thingy. He looked closer at the lid. Was that Greek? Sammy was the smart one, but Dean knew a little bit of the language. A smidgen. Just enough to order a schwarma. He looked closer. This jar looked ancient, but the Greek looked modern. How the hell did that work?

"Afoú anoichtheí, I̱ elpída chánetai," he said. Huh. Still didn't know what it meant, but he knew how to pronounce it. Sort of. He popped the lid off the jar and looked inside. He hoped that inscription hadn't meant, "Don't open. Dead inside." He peered inside. Nothing was inside of it, but he noticed that it smelled. Not bad though. Actually, the smell brought back memories of him sitting on a counter while his mother made pot roast, John's favorite meal. This was ridiculous. No ancient jar could smell like his mom's cooking, especially when his mom had been dead for over thirty years.

The jar was just a rotten trip down memory lane.

He snapped the jar closed again. "Ridiculous," he muttered.

Garth appeared, freshly de-vampired. "What's that?" he said. He pointed to the jar.

"Don't know. Sammy brought it back with him last night."

Garth looked at it. "Huh. Looks Greek. Like, ancient Greek. I can't read this."

"No, man, it's modern Greek. Even I can pronounce it."

"No, it's really not."

He looked at it again. "It says _afoú anoichtheí, i elpída chánetai_."

"Um, I don't know how you're reading that."

Dean frowned. It was right there, as obvious as the hair on his head. "Seriously, Garth, don't pull my leg. I didn't sleep much last night."

"I'm not," Garth argued. He looked irritated. "I can't read that and I don't know how you can."

Dean stared at the jar again. "Maybe Sam can figure it out." He picked it up. "I'm going to take it with us. It'll give him something to do besides flirt with the nurses." He was about to head out the motel room door when he heard a voice that had been silent to him for six months.

"What did you do."

It wasn't a question; it was a statement. Dean had thought a lot about that gravelly voice in the past few months, and he knew that when he turned around he'd be looking into the familiar blue eyes that he dreamed about too often. So he didn't turn around. He knew it was chicken of him, but with all the other shit that had gone down in his life in the past six months, he didn't want the first thing he saw in Castiel's eyes to be disappointment. "Hello to you too, Cas." After a few moments he summoned his courage and turned around and looked Cas square in the eye. Yup, there was the disappointment.

The angel ignored Dean's greeting. "Dean. What. Did. You. Do."

"I didn't _do_ anything." He stared at the wall behind Castiel's head, and he knew how Cas was going to respond: the blue eyes would narrow and the shoulders would straighten and the forehead would crease. He knewwhat Castiel was feeling as he looked at him right now; the angel was equal parts annoyed and frustrated but didn't know how to express either emotion. "Look, Cas, I don't know what you're talking about. Where have you been, anyway?"

Instead of an answer, he heard a fluttering of wings and the angel was gone. Again. Somewhere inside of him, he felt a little emptier than he had five minutes before.

"So, that's Castiel," said Garth, "He's kind of a dick."

Dean snorted. "You could say that," he said, "C'mon. Let's go see Sam."

Sam was awake when they arrived at the hospital. "Hey," he said to Dean and Garth when they walked in, "Where have you been all day? Being lazy?"

"I wish," said Dean, "Me and Garth here went out to get some grub and then next thing you know we're ganking two vamps."

"In the daytime?"

"Yeah. It was strange. And I met Castiel," said Garth.

"Whoa. Dean, Cas is back?"

Dean could feel his brother's concern rolling off him in waves. He wanted to yell, "Yes! He's back!" and then punch a wall. He wanted to choke Castiel—not in the sexy way. He wanted to hold Cas down and make him swear to call once in a while. Mostly, he wanted Cas to come back and _stay_. Instead, Dean said, "Yeah, he's back. But man, you should've seen Garth take out this one vamp. With Xena's sword. Garth, tell him." He excused himself to go find Sam's nurse or doctor or whoever was on shift; he didn't care. He just didn't want to talk about Castiel anymore.

He found the doctor on shift. Sam's arm wasn't going to be casted for a few hours yet and the doctor worried about infection. His brother would be kept in the hospital for at least one more night. At the earliest, Sam was looking at six months rehabilitation time before he'd be able to fully use his arm again. The doctor assured him that it could have been much, much worse, and that his brother would make a full recovery.

"Doc, in our job…you need both arms," Dean told him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester, but healing takes time," the doctor told him, "But I promise you that—barring any complications—your brother will be good as new in a few months."

Dean thanked the doctor. He wasn't quite ready to go back and face Sam and Garth, so he wandered into the hospital lobby, looking for one of those cheap coffee vending machines. The hospital lobby was cheerless: a rectangular heap of plastic chairs, outdated magazines, and worn linoleum. Tucked away in a corner was the vending machine, a godsend to the tired. Dean paid $1.25 for 4 oz of the grimiest coffee he'd ever tasted, but he figured it was better to have some caffeine than none at all. He sat on one of the plastic chairs and instantly remembered why he hated them. "Damn thing will make my ass go numb," he mumbled.

It wasn't often he got to be by himself, even if he felt alone most of the time. When he was a kid, he had Sammy with him 24/7. Kid would hardly let him have time to pee. Truthfully, he didn't mind it so much. If he were twenty years younger and Sam were ten feet shorter, he'd probably be up there sharing the hospital bed with his brother and reading comic books. But Cas's sudden (and short) appearance had thrown Dean off. Cas had been doing that since the day he'd first shown up in the warehouse, all scowls and shattered light bulbs.

He didn't want to think about how Castiel affected him. He didn't want to go all Sigmund Freud on himself and try to analyze his feelings. He wanted it to be simple, clear-cut, the way that John Winchester had tried to paint life out to be. Things were good or they were evil, and anything in between was automatically pushed to the latter category. But Castiel was anything but simple. He'd stopped trying to categorize the angel a long time ago. Cas wasn't good, wasn't evil. He was neither and both. Sometimes, he heard his father in his head telling him that _everything_ had its place on the spectrum. When that happened, an even smaller voice in his head would whisper, "But it's _Cas_."

And here he was, sitting in a hard-as-hell hospital lobby chair, thinking about the angel. Again. He halfway expected Celine Dion to show up and start crooning an appropriate soundtrack to this oh so angsty chick-flick moment.

Instead what he got was a sweat-slicked man falling into his lap. "Hey watch it," snapped Dean. The man fell onto the floor. "Hey, are you alright?" The man groaned in response. "Uh, I think we need some help over here!" Dean yelled. The man clutched his abdomen, obviously in intense pain.

"I need…I need," the man gasped.

"What do you need?"

The man didn't—or couldn't—answer. He continued heaving and holding his abdomen. He crawled away from Dean, and when Dean reached down to help him, the man pushed him away. The more Dean tried to help, the harder the man pushed him away.

"Hey, man, you gotta let me help you," said Dean.

The man shook his head. "Doctor," he whispered, "Need doctor."

"Well it's a good thing we're in a hospital." Dean didn't want to leave the guy alone, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that no one was coming to help. "Hey, just wait here a minute. I'm gonna find someone to help."

"Nmnmgngh." The man kept crawling away.

"Where are you going?"

The man pointed to the men's restroom. And kept crawling. Dean shook his head and helped the man to his feet. "C'mon," he said, "I'll take ya." He helped the man to the restroom, holding his breath the entire time because, _man_, did that guy smell like a sewer. He left the guy alone in the restroom and headed to the front desk. He told the nurse at the desk about the guy and she promised to send someone to check on him. There, good deed done for the day.

Still not ready to go back and face Sam, he wandered down to the cafeteria and bought a blueberry muffin that tasted like the inside of a cheerios box. He got another coffee (couldn't have enough caffeine on a day like today) and sat at a table next to a couple of doctors. At least he thought they were doctors. Could've been demons in scrubs, but since it was Saturday and he was tired, he didn't really care.

One of the unbreakable habits he'd picked up from his dad was eavesdropping. It didn't matter where or when, if there were people talking within hearing distance, he listened in. His dad called it "being alert to your surroundings"; Dean called it "snooping." Nonetheless, he couldn't stop himself from listening in on the hospital staff's conversation.

"…was the third case today," said a female voice, "No one knows why or how it started. They think we're going to have to call it in."

"Three cases? In one day? That's unheard of!" said a male voice.

"I know; it's very strange," the woman replied, "The attending isn't saying much, but I think they're worried about there being more than the three confirmed cases."

"Do they think it could be…" the man let his voice trail off. He whispered something to the woman that Dean couldn't make out.

"I don't know. But if we get any more cases, we're going to have to tell someone," she said.

Dean heard their pagers go off simultaneously and the two abandoned their trays and left the cafeteria. He'd heard enough to pique his interest so he followed them. He was most definitely _not_ avoiding Sammy. He was following a lead.

The pair of almost-certainly real doctors power-walked down to the lobby where Dean saw the sick man he'd helped to the bathroom being loaded onto a stretcher. The hospital staff were speaking in hushed tones—the tone that Dean knew meant they were trying not to panic. Whatever this guy had, it didn't look good.

In his head, Dean heard Sam's voice saying, "If the hospital staff are panicking, you probably shouldn't go anywhere near this guy." Unfortunately, Dean never took Sam's practical advice. Not for the small stuff anyway, like your average sick guy in the hospital kind of stuff. He imagined himself as a smarter version of Doctor Sexy. What would Doctor Sexy do? Figure out what the hell was wrong with this guy, of course. He covertly followed the subtly-panicking hospital staff as they wheeled the guy through the ER. He still had his visitor's badge on, and if he got stopped by anyone he planned on giving them puppy dog eyes that Sam would be proud of and insisting that he was lost.

He followed them down a long hallway—if there'd been flickering lights it would've been a horror film—and stood just outside the door of the room the man was wheeled into. He was careful to stay out of sight but within earshot. The man was groaning even more loudly in pain than before, and before Dean knew what was happening what seemed to be a swarm of doctors rushed into the room. It was mayhem, absolute craziness, as three more people were wheeled into the same room. There were at least a dozen voices scrambling over each other, but Dean very clearly heard three words: Outbreak. Quarantine. Now. And then he knew that his inner-Sammy-voice had been absolutely right—he should have left it alone. Still, he lingered outside the doors until a nurse with an attitude shooed him away. She looked worried that he'd overheard something he shouldn't. But it was too late, the doctors were panicking and more loose-lipped than they should have been with the door open. He already knew three things:

The hospital was dealing with an outbreak of cholera.

There hadn't been a major outbreak in the U.S. in over 100 years.

The virus wasn't responding to typical treatment.

Dean wasn't the kind of person to panic, but there was a long cobra of uneasiness that curled its way through the pit of his stomach, and there, unasked for, in the back of his mind were Cas's words: "What did you do." He didn't believe in coincidence; the angel's return and the soon-to-be-epidemic were connected somehow. Had he somehow caused this? What had he done?

He trudged his way back up to Sam's room after making a pit stop at the men's room to splash some water on his face and try to rid himself of the increasing feeling of yuckiness that crept up his spine. Something wasn't right and whenever things weren't right he needed to be around Sam. Call it sappiness or brotherly-bond or whatever, but when things got rough, Sam was his guiding light, his beacon.

Garth wasn't in the room when Dean walked in. "Hey," he said to his brother.

"Hey." Sam was holding the urn that Dean had forgotten bringing. "So, Garth says you can read this?"

"Yeah. Why, can't you?" Dean had been hoping that Garth wasn't Greek-savvy.

"No. Tell me what it says."

"It says: _afoú anoichtheí, i elpída chánetai." _Dean frowned. "Wait, it's changed. How can it change? It says: _ti chánetai den boreí na vretheí , dióti den eínai chaména_."

The creases in Sam's forehead were deep with worry. Dean hated that look. He much preferred the bitch faces. "Hand me my phone," Sam said, "And read it again."

So Dean did. Sam typed it into whatever app he had on his phone that would translate it. "Huh," he grunted, "That's weird."

"What is?"

"The translator recognizes those words as modern Greek."

"So?"

"So that doesn't make sense. This urn is old. I'm no archaeologist, but I'd say that _at least_ this thing is two thousand years old."

"Two _thousand_? And there's not a scratch on it?"

Sam shook his head. "We've seen mystical objects before. We've gotta assume that this has a spell on it. Garth said you opened it?"

"Um…yeah. It's empty."

Sam sighed and gave him Bitchface #2: the you're-a-dumb-ass face. "So you just opened this old Greek jar even though we found it in the creepy lair of a crazy hunter and you couldn't translate the inscription?"

"….Yeah."

And there was Bitchface #2 again and suddenly the memory of the day he'd sat down and categorized each one of Sammy's bitchfaces swept through his mind, a hurricane of fondness and sibling rivalry and nostalgia. He wondered if he and Sammy would ever get to a place where they could sit down and just be brothers again.

"Well, the inscriptions are very similar," Sam said, "The first one translates roughly to: 'once opened, hope is lost. Know thyself."

"But the jar was empty."

"You of all people should know that sometimes we have to believe in things that we can't see."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

And there was Bitchface #3. Sam ignored his question and said, "The second translation means something like, 'what is lost cannot be found because it is not lost.'"

"Well that's just goddamned confusing."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, it is."

"But it was empty."

Sam gave him a look that he couldn't quite recognize. If he had to guess, it was equal parts annoyance and pity. "Dean," Sam said slowly, as if he were talking to a small child, "Can you see every monster that we deal with?"

"Well, no, but—,"

"Then what's to say that what was in that urn was noticeable? You could've unleashed the virus that infects us all with the zombie apocalypse for all I know!"

Dean inwardly winced. He suspected Sam was closer to the truth than he realized. "I'm telling you, nothing was in that urn." He knew he was being stubborn. "Except…"

"Except what?"

"Nothing," Dean said, "It's not important."

Sam gave him Bitchface #1 for good measure. "I'll be outta here tomorrow morning," he said, "We can do research on this thing then."

"Alright." If Dean's suspicions were right, it would become apparent fairly quickly what it was that he'd unleashed. Perhaps Cas was right—he had done something. Somehow the pathetic excuse of "I didn't know!" wasn't going to hold up this time. He should have known—did know—better.

"Why don't you find Garth and head back to the motel?"

Dean smirked. "Is that cute nurse coming back or something?"

"No. Maybe."

"What's her name?"

Sam blushed, _blushed. _"Natalie."

"Well, tell _Natalie_ that she better take good care of my brother. And I mean that in more ways than one."

And there was Bitchface #3. "Shut up and get out."

Dean smirked again. "See you tomorrow, bitch."

"Jerk."

Satisfied that Sam was in good hands—well, he'd be happier if Sam wasn't in the hospital at all—he found Garth down the hall chatting up one of the nurses. Not Nurse Natalie, of course. Dean was willing to wager that the redhead wasn't going to have eyes for anyone else for a while. He'd seen Sam have that effect on women many times, but his younger brother never seemed to take advantage of it. But that was Sammy, all politeness and knight-in-shining-honor. Dean was the one who pulled in chicks at the local dive bar. But that was all in the past now.

Garth was telling the nurse on staff about his collection of katanas, some of which he'd gotten from Japan. The nurse looked bored, and Dean felt a twinge of sympathy for Garth. "Hey, Garth, how about we get outta here?"

Garth looked disappointed, but the nurse made no move to continue their conversation about Japanese swords. "Okay," he said.

As they left the hospital, Dean noticed at least four other people who looked sick in the same way as the guy from the lobby had. He was now almost certain that whatever had been in that jar…it hadn't been good. He needed answers, and he couldn't wait until Sam was released from the hospital. He had a feeling, deep in his gut, that by then it would be too late.

He asked Garth if he wouldn't mind if they stopped by the local library. Said he wanted to pick up some books for Sam. Said he was being the "good big brother." He said that Sam wouldn't be able to carry the books anyway with his bum arm. His mouth kept moving, spewing out rationalization after rationalization, until even Garth knew that it was a lie. But Garth was a better friend than Dean had given him credit for and pulled up the address for the local library on his smart phone and said, "It closes in fifteen minutes."

Dean drove to the library quickly. He zipped inside, asked the librarian for the section on ancient Greece, and pulled every book on the topic he could find. Even the pop-up children's book. The librarian was slightly miffed that a new patron showed up right before closing—even more miffed when she saw the number of books he wanted to check out—but Dean gave her his best impression of Sam's puppy dog eyes, batted his eyelashes (metaphorically, thank you very much), and said, "Sorry to come in so late, but these are for my brother. He's in the hospital." That softened her right up. So when Dean walked back to the Impala fifteen minutes later, he had a stack of books up to his chin and three free bookmarks.

When Garth and he arrived back at the motel that night, he suggested that they get a head start on the research. They spread the books across Dean's bed and began picking through them one at a time. Dean was glad that he didn't have to explain anything to the other hunter; Garth had seemed to pick up on Dean's non-talkative mood. In silence, they looked through the books. Neither of them knew what they were looking for, but the growing sense of dread was building in Dean's stomach. Churning like sour milk. He thought he might be sick.

In the second hour of staring at books, he began to wish he had waited for Sammy. He'd been staring at the same page for the past fifteen minutes and hadn't read a damn word. Who gave a shit about They-see-us or Hey-fish-guts or whatever other screwy names these old dead dudes had? So far he'd read nothing about a jar. Or urn. Or whatever. He groaned and slammed his head on the open book. The book smelled old and musty and his stomach didn't like that smell.

He knew he was going to be sick.

He mumbled something to Garth like, "Berightbackkeepreading" and stumbled into the bathroom. He clicked the lock (if Garth walked in on him spewing his guts out or worse, his intestines, he'd die right then of embarrassment) and went to the sink to splash cold water on his face. His stomach rebelled in every step until suddenly his stomach wasn't the only problem anymore. The churning sensation moved further south and Dean felt as if the Incredible Hulk had grabbed hold of his intestines and twisted. Of all the pains Dean had ever felt, this was definitely in the top five. And he'd been to hell. And purgatory.

Twenty minutes later and he was pretty certain that he was dying. Served him right for opening that stupid urn without translating the inscription first because really, Sammy was right, that was a dumbass move. Now he was going to literally crap himself to death. Even though he was sick as a dog, he could appreciate the irony. Oh god, if there was a god, make the pain stop. Tell the fucking Hulk to let up already. He felt as if his entire body had been wrung out to dry.

He heard some faint tapping at the door. "Dean?" called Garth, "Are you okay?"

No he wasn't fucking okay.

"Yeah, man," he said, "Just ate something that didn't agree with me. Bet it was the kennel corn."

Lies.

"Well, can I bring you something? Some Pepto Bismol? My mom used to swear by charcoal tablets. I think I have some in my bag. Open the door and I'll give you some."

"NO! I mean, nah, I'm…uh…I'm good. I'll be fine in a few minutes."

More lies.

"Are you sure?"

Dean didn't answer. He couldn't answer. The pain—god, he'd never felt anything like it. He would like to say that he didn't scream and clutch his abdomen, that tears didn't push their way out of his eyes and stream down his face like the goddamn Nile, that he wasn't drenched in sweat and body fluids (not the sexy kind). And when Garth broke open the bathroom door—Swiss Army Knives really could do everything—he would really like to say that he had not collapsed on the floor, surrounded by pools of his own shit, and whimpered, "Help me."

Garth pulled out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. He asked them to send an ambulance, and Dean was never more grateful to the man. The Impala's interior would have been destroyed by Dean's sickness, a disgusting possibility that he was glad to avoid.

"Hold on, Dean," said Garth, "They're coming as fast as they can."

And then Garth did something for Dean that no one had done since Mary Winchester's death, not even Sam. He grabbed a towel and began cleaning Dean up and didn't so much as dry heave. Either the guy didn't have the upchuck reflex or he'd been through this kind of thing before. He hummed Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" as he worked, and Dean could feel himself relaxing slightly. Not much, because it still felt like the Hulk was arm-wrestling his insides, but enough to make him breathe a little easier.

"Thank you," he said to Garth. He didn't know if the man heard him.

"I took care of my grandpa when he—when he—well, let's just say he didn't go out as quickly or as gracefully as he wanted," Garth explained, "He loved Elton John's music. I know every lyric to every song. It gave him peace in the end, I hope." He patted Dean on the shoulder. "Just…try to relax, okay? If you die on my watch, your brother will never forgive me."

Dean didn't doubt that.

Garth continued to talk to Dean. He told him about his past life as a dentist (he'd take a pack of werewolves over bratty children with cavities any day) and the cases he'd been on. He told Dean every gritty detail of his life that a friend would know but Dean had never bothered to ask, and by the time the ambulance came, he knew the guy pretty damn well. Almost like a real friend.

God, he was going to die, wasn't he? Here he was, lying on a disgusting bathroom floor, having a bonding moment with Garth. He was going to die. He could sense it, kinda the way he could that night he and Sam sang Bon Jovi and he'd been press-ganged into hell. He was going to die, and Garth could very well be the last friendly face he saw.

"Garth," he said as the EMTs checked his vitals. "Garth, you gotta tell Sam that it was the jar."

"The jar?"

"Yeah." His voice shook. "The jar."

Before Dean could say anything else, the Hulk living in his guts grabbed hold of Thor's hammer and mercilessly beat him from the inside of his own body. He screamed and thrashed in pain—fuck the scale of 1 to 10, this pain was a 13 at least—and cried out for Sammy, Bobby. Cas. He said things, god he didn't even know what he was saying.

He was going to die.

The EMTs loaded him onto a gurney and Dean's last conscious thought was that the hospital lobby chairs were more comfortable than that piece of shit.

END PART TWO.


	3. Sunday Morning, Rain is Falling

Sunday Morning, Rain is Falling

Part 3 of _Good Things Lost_

"Sam."

He must be fuzzy on pain meds, because in his semi-awake state he swore that Nurse Natalie's voice sounded like Garth, and if he had to choose, he'd prefer the redhead's soft lilting voice to wake up to.

"Sam, c'mon wake up." A hand grabbed his shoulder and shook. "_Wake up_."

"Mmmnnnggh." There was no need for him to wake up. He was getting released from the hospital in a few hours. He was very happy in the drug-induced sleep stage.

"Sam," said the person who was most definitely not Nurse Natalie, "It's about Dean. Wake. Up."

Dean? What about Dean? Sam's eyes opened and Garth was standing over him. The other man beckoned in a nurse with a wheelchair. "C'mon," he said, "We gotta go."

"What happened to Dean?" asked Sam as he climbed into the wheelchair. (He didn't understand the point of the wheelchair since it was his arm that had been injured, but the nurse insisted. Sam guessed they wanted to avoid a potential lawsuit.)

"He's been admitted to the hospital," said Garth, "They're running tests on him right now, but the doc thinks it might be cholera."

"Cholera? Here, in the U.S.?" Sam knew that, on average, only 5-6 cases occurred stateside every year and most of them were because the infected had been travelling in third world countries. The likelihood that Dean had contracted the disease? Well, it wasn't likely. It was near impossible, and he told Garth so.

"That's what the doc said," replied Garth.

They wheeled Sam to the other side of the hospital, to a long stretch of rooms that were mostly empty except for a half dozen patients. Sam assumed these were all the cholera-infected patients and that they were unofficially under some kind of quarantine. Dean's room was the fourth, and he looked better off than the other cholera patients Sam had wheeled by. Even though his brother wasn't conscious, Sam could see that Dean was extremely pale, almost the color of the hospital bedding, and that Dean's eyes were slightly sunken in. If Dean could have seen himself, he'd probably say that he was the Sleeping Beauty of Corpses.

A doctor came into the room and explained Dean's situation to Sam and Garth. It was definitely cholera (a mutation of the serotype O139, to be specific) and Dean was definitely not responding to treatment. Typical cholera cases responded to hydration therapy and antibiotics, but Dean was allergic to several antibiotics and non-responsive to the others and the hydration therapy couldn't keep up with the speed of his fluid loss. Leave it to Dean to be difficult. The doctor left saying that they would continue treatment until something further could be done. Meaning that they had no clue what to do for his brother.

In short: it didn't look good for the Winchester.

Inferred diagnosis: Dean was going to die.

The doctor's words left Sam with no plan to fix his brother. And he _had _to fix Dean because if his brother could get thrown into hell to save him then he could fix something as ordinary and human as cholera. The day would come when Sam would _know_ that they'd been beaten, that the Winchesters couldn't shoot or charm or manipulate their way out of Death's clutches, but Sam refused to let it be this day. He refused to let Dean be taken by something so painfully _common _as cholera.

He wheeled the chair around, determined to get released from the hospital immediately, almost knocking Garth over.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where's the fire?"

"I have to get out of here," said Sam, "I have to fix Dean."

Garth's forehead wrinkled. "I hate to point this out, Sam, but you're not a doctor."

"I know that, Garth," he replied, "But I can't just sit here and do _nothing_. Research…that's what I do. Maybe there's—I don't know—a spell or something that can help him."

Garth's eyes widened. "I'm supposed to tell you! Dean told me to tell you! It was one of the last things he said before he lost consciousness. The medics said he was rambling from deliriousness."

"Dean asked you to tell me what?"

"That it was the jar."

The jar? What jar?

Oh.

"I definitely need to get out of here," said Sam, "And I need to go to the library."

"No worries about that. Dean and I hit it up last night," said Garth.

"Dean? Dean Winchester, my brother, went to the library without me?" Wow. Dean must really be sick.

He looked at his brother again. He didn't like seeing Dean unconscious. Hell, he didn't even like seeing Dean sleep. Dean was like the Energizer Bunny—he gave off so much energy that usually Sam craved peace and quiet—but a quiet and still Dean was the single most terrifying thing that Sam had ever seen. He'd lost Dean once before, no, twice if he counted purgatory, and he would perform every spell/ritual/incantation before he'd go through that again. With reluctance, he wheeled his chair away from Dean. He didn't want to leave his brother, but he knew that he had to figure out what that jar was and what it had done to Dean.

"Where are you going?" asked Garth.

"I am going to get myself released from the hospital," said Sam, "And then I'm going to figure out a way to save Dean."

Sam's doctor didn't want him to be released until mid-morning. According to him, the middle of the night (it was only midnight) was an ungodly hour to sign the proper paperwork. Sam didn't often use his height to his advantage, but he stood up out of the wheelchair and towered over the doctor. He said, "I am leaving regardless of whether or not that paperwork is signed."

The doctor relented and signed the paperwork.

When Sam and Garth finally exited the building (Nurse Natalie spent ten minutes trying to convince Sam to stay the rest of the night), the sky was violet and churning. Sam couldn't see three feet in front of him because of rain, but he walked across the parking lot determined to get to the motel and his research as quickly as possible. Halfway across, he realized that he had no idea where he'd parked the car.

Garth didn't know either.

"Oh, right! I rode in the ambulance with Dean," he said, "Guess that means a taxi for us."

Great. He'd walked through the rain and gotten his cast soaked for nothing. He refused to worry about that right now. They could recast his arm later.

An hour later, when they finally got to the motel, Sam grabbed a book and got to work. The key to curing Dean was figuring out what that urn was, and Sam was willing to bet that it was definitely supernatural and more than likely cursed.

Dean had certainly grabbed a _variety _of books. _Feminist Readings of Antigone_? _Homer's Cosmic Fabrication Choice and Design in the Iliad_? Sam skimmed them, but they were as useless as they sounded. Garth grabbed another book and plopped in front of the motel room's old television that got probably three channels total. He said that noise helped him think. Sam was used to Dean's constant watching of cheesy telenovelas, so he didn't say anything. At least Garth watched the news.

He was halfway through _A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology_ when a snippet of the newscaster's report caught his attention. In Washington, D.C., the city's murder rate had practically doubled in one night. There had been more murders in the past 12 hours than there had been in the past 6 months, the Chief of Police stated. That sounded like a future case, so Sam filed it in the back of his brain for future reference. Five minutes later, the newscaster reported a sudden influx of hate crimes in Toledo. Another possible case. In California, massive fires had wiped out 55% of the state's crops, devastating the agricultural industry. In Florida, there had been an unprecedented fifteen cases of shark attacks in the past twelve hours. In Utah, three cases of cannibalism had been reported. In Michigan, a man abducted, raped, and murdered two four-year-old girls. He claimed he'd been on his way to the supermarket when the sudden "animalistic urge" overtook him. He planned to plead insanity.

After that last report, the newscaster switched to world news which was even more depressing. Sam's brain circled back to the man in Michigan every few minutes. Overtaken by an animalistic urge? Maybe he was possessed? Nothing else in the news report fit with that assumption though. It seemed like the worst traits in humanity had gone into overdrive in the past twelve hours for no apparent reason.

Except that Dean had opened that jar a little over twelve hours ago.

Sam had a hunch; it wasn't much more than a horrible sense of dread in the pit of his stomach, but it was enough. "Garth," Sam said, "What would you say if I told you that all the bad things in the world were released at once?"

Garth's eyes didn't leave the television. "What do you mean?"

"Like what myths, legends, I don't know, fairy tales come to mind?"

"A story in which all evil is released at once?"

"Yeah."

Garth thought for a moment. "The only thing that comes to mind is Pandora's Box."

Sam grabbed his laptop and typed into the Google search bar: Ancient. Greek. Word. Jar. Nothing useful in the first few results. Halfway down the second page Sam saw the word "pithos." _Pithos_. The guardian had said that word on Friday night, when he had possessed Sam's body.

Sam googled "pithos." Scrolling through the search results he saw a wiki article for Rick Riordan's Camp Half-Blood. The entry was titled "Pandora's Pithos." He then google-searched "Pandora's Pithos." Apparently, in the sixteenth century, a guy named Erasmus mistranslated the word "pithos" to "box" instead of the more accurate term "jar." That sense of dread in his stomach crept slowly up his spine and through his arms until his hands shook. Sam asked Garth if his brother had happened to pick up a copy of Edith Hamilton's _Mythology_. Sam kicked himself in the brain for not thinking of that book sooner; it was the printed and bound wiki of all mythologies of the Western world.

Garth found him a copy and there, on page 74, was the answer.

_Another story about Pandora is that the source of all misfortune was not her wicked nature, but only her curiosity. The gods presented her with a box into which each had put something harmful, and forbade her ever to open it. Then they sent her to Epimetheus, who took her gladly although Prometheus had warned him never to accept anything from Zeus. He took her, and afterward when that dangerous thing, a woman, was his, he understood how good his brother's advice had been. For Pandora, like all woman, was possessed of a lively curiosity. She __**had **__to know what was in the box. One day she lifted the lid—and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief for mankind. In terror Pandora clapped the lid down, but too late. _

Oh shit.

If Dean had really opened Pandora's Box—and it was looking more likely by the second that he had—then the Winchesters were screwed. Dean would call it "up shit creek without a paddle." And if the box…jar…urn…thingy had contained the original strain of cholera from thousands and thousands of years ago, then it no longer surprised Sam that modern medical treatments couldn't keep up with the potency of the disease. In fact, Sam considered it a miracle that his brother was alive at all. The shaking in his hands spread to his entire body. The Winchesters had faced some serious situations before—things they should never have walked away from—like apocalypses, devils, leviathan, and even the occasional pissed-off god-but since Lucifer and Michael had been locked in the cage, the Winchesters had been breathing easier. This, if it really was Pandora's Box, was bigger, so much bigger, than anything they'd faced since the apocalypse; this time maybe neither of the Winchesters would walk away.

Reality hit Sam so suddenly it felt like Abaddon had punched him in the gut again. If something didn't happen in the next few hours, Dean was going to die.

_Dean was going to die. _

With more dedication than he'd ever shown, he attacked the books. None offered any more information than Edith Hamilton had. The jar was opened, bad things were released, and it was supposed to be a metaphor for early human civilization's sexism and oppression of women. Sam now wished that he had paid more attention to the ghost that had possessed him. "A guardian," he'd called himself. What else had he said? He remembered the names "Helios" and "Gaea." That's right; the ghost had been made a guardian by the sons of Gaea. Sam went back to google and discovered that Gaea was the Greek equivalent of Mother Earth _and _she was the mother of the Titans.

Sam had been right when he guessed that the jar was old.

According to Hamilton's recounting of mythology, Zeus had created the jar for Pandora, but Sam was discovering that the jar was even older than that. Sam decided to drive back to the haunted house and see what else he could discover. If Sam was lucky, the ghost guardian had left behind a journal or something.

Sam wasn't lucky.

After an unfortunate incident with the Impala (Sam could do a great many things, but driving one-handed was not one of them), he'd convinced Garth to take him back to the haunted house. Garth drove at the speed of an old woman on her way to church, but eventually they made it back to the haunted house.

Or at least they returned to where the haunted house _used_ to be.

"What the hell?" said Garth, "It was right here! Right here! A house can't just disappear, can it?"

Sam didn't say anything. The house had disappeared, but the mailbox remained. A mailbox that hadn't appeared to have been opened…well, ever. If the ghost had been alive, truly alive at one point in time, and had lived in that house, how had he never received mail? Not even one bill? Not for the last time, he regretted not knowing more Greek. "What if…"he muttered.

"What if what?" asked Garth.

Sam recounted everything he knew about the ghost: he was a guardian of Pandora's Box, he'd been given the job by Gaea or one of her sons, and that the guy had been doing the job for thousands of years. He remembered reading in one of the mythology books that an oath sworn in the name of Gaea was the most binding of all oaths. "So what if," Sam hypothesized, "What if the house was created by the oath? If this guy swore his life away to protect the jar, maybe the oath provided him a place in which to protect it? I don't know—I'm just guessing really—but the house disappeared when the jar was taken out of it. I think that is another confirmation that this really was Pandora's Box. Pithos. Whatever."

Unfortunately, this also meant that any information about the jar vanished along with the house, and Sam's hope of finding a cure for Dean disappeared along with it. He was running out of options; he could only think of two contingency plans and if Dean were awake, he would object (also known as bitch and moan) about both of them.

"Garth," he said, "We need to do a séance."

"Now?"

"Now."

Ten years before, Sam would have thought it unnecessary to have all the materials for a séance in the trunk of the car. Now it was just life.

Unfortunately for the hunters, it was still raining like cow piss. The weather forced the two men into Garth's truck. Sam placed the mostly-clean altar cloth on their makeshift table (a soggy cardboard box) and hoped that the candles wouldn't burn it all to ashes. Placing the bowl of herbs in the center, Sam recited the incantation, "_Amate spiritus obscure te quaerimus. Te oramus, nobiscum colloquere apud nos circita_." He pinched a little bit of frankincense into one of the candles as he finished speaking.

Nothing.

"Maybe you mispronounced it," said Garth.

"Not likely. I've been doing this for years and I think I know what I'm—"

"Hello, Moose."

Garth nearly jumped out of his skin at the appearance of the King of Hell in his truck. Crowley was not the supernatural entity Sam was expecting. "Crowley, what do you want?" said Sam.

"Now is that any way to talk to an old friend?" purred Crowley, "After all, without my help, you'd still be playing hostel for Gadreel and your friend Feathers wouldn't be traipsing around Upstairs, now would he? Or maybe the other Winchester's upset about that, hmm? Squirrel doesn't like losing his angelic boyfriend to bureaucracy and the Heavenly Order?"

"Shut up, Crowley. Tell us what you're doing here before I exorcize you."

The King of Hell, who was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit (not that Sam noticed such things or ever dreamed of an alternate universe when he'd get to lawyer up in one), frowned at the Winchester. "The Winchesters are always in such a rush," he said, "Never want to make time for small talk. I wonder why I even bother anymore."

"Seriously, Crowley, we _really _do not have time for this." Sam's annoyance got the better of him and he clenched his fists to prevent him from grabbing the demon's shoulders and shaking him. It was true. He really didn't have time for this; his brother was lying in a hospital, all the water in his body quickly and violently forcing its way out. Soon there would be no helping Dean. Sam had hours, at most, to fix this and the King of Hell was wasting precious minutes of that.

The King of Hell huffed a little bit but finally admitted that he had shown up because of curiosity. Mostly. "Alright, I'm here to propose a deal. There are a few souls that I personally escort to their hell dimension, like yours, for example. My secretary keeps a Post-it on your file, as it were," said the demon.

"You have a secretary?" asked Garth.

"Of course I do. Name's Beatrice. Lovely lady. Killed her husband in the 50s. Couldn't do a thing without her."

Sam sighed. He wanted to leave and go back to the hospital and spend what could be the last few hours of Dean's life with his brother, but curiosity kept him in the truck and not exorcizing the demon. "Get to the point," Sam said.

"Pushy, pushy, Moose. I bet the girls hate that. Well, it's not like any of them live long anyway. As I was saying, some files warrant Post-its, such as the one you just tried to summon in your little 'séance.'"

"So is that why you came instead of the soul we were summoning?"

"I always knew you were the smart brother, Moose. Yes, I've got that soul locked away in a dimension of cannibals. Did you know that was one of the worst crimes you could commit in ancient Greece?"

"Crowley," Sam growled. His patience had vanished just like the haunted house.

"Anyway, this file had a Post-it because the man, the _guardian_, had something I want. Something I want very much." He gave Sam a knowing look.

Shit. Crowley knew about guardian, which meant he knew about the jar. In no possible future could this be a good thing. Instead of pretending that he didn't know what Crowley was talking abou, Sam said, "And? What will you do to get it?"

Crowley licked his lips and grinned. It was the smile of a predator, of a man who knew that he was going to get what he wanted. "I'll save your brother."

Shit. Shit. Shit. He knew about Dean? The King of Hell had done his research. Sam backpedaled, "There's nothing wrong with Dean. He's back at the motel."

"Oh, now you're acting like the stupid Winchester. Don't do that, Moose, it isn't attractive." Crowley snapped his fingers and one of his demon lackeys appeared outside in the rain. The demon politely rapped on the driver's side window, and Garth rolled it down. The demon, a middle-aged woman who looked like a librarian, handed Garth an envelope. "For the boss," she said and disappeared.

"That's for Moose," said Crowley.

Sam opened the envelope and saw pictures of Dean in the hospital. Pictures of Dean's doctor with blacked-out eyes grinning and holding a syringe next to Dean's IV drip, of a nurse pretending to bite Dean's neck, of demons holding knives poised threateningly over Dean's heart. Sam wished more than ever that he'd ganked the King of Hell when he'd had him locked up in the basement of the bunker.

"Garth," Sam said, "Can you give us a minute?"

"Are you sure, Sam? I can stay."

"No…I'll be fine. Just give us a minute."

Garth grabbed his umbrella and went outside to stand in the rain. Sam hated to do this to the guy, but he needed to chat with Crowley. Alone.

He didn't know what to do. True, Dean had already opened the jar, but what if there was more it could do? More damage to inflict? What if saving Dean meant inflicting the world with more pain and suffering? He looked to Garth, but the other man was outside in the rain playing Plants versus Zombies as he huddled underneath the umbrella. Garth had never dealt with anything this huge, this potentially catastrophic, before. Garth was a hunter but he wasn't a Winchester.

"If I give you the jar, you'll save Dean?" Sam clarified.

"Yes," said Crowley.

"How will you save him? How do I know you can do what you say you can?"

"You don't."

Sam tried very hard to remember that Crowley had been helpful in the past. The not-so-distant past. It was Crowley's help that had finally evicted Gadreel from Sam's body. It was Crowley who had found a backdoor into Heaven for Castiel. It was Crowley who had ganked Abaddon and reclaimed control of Hell and reestablished the status quo. It was Crowley who had made sure that the soul of Kevin Tran ended up where it should be, for no other reason than he had "liked" the kid.

"Why are you willing to make me a deal rather than just kill me for the jar?" asked Sam.

Crowley laughed and the sound was more demonic than anything he'd said thus far. "You Winchesters always think so simply and yet you miss the point entirely. Don't you think that if I had wanted to kill you, I would have done it years ago? You and your brother are useful to me. You maintain the balance. Keep the angels from shutting us down. Keep them from controlling all God's good green earth. You take one or two of my minions once in a while, so what? I call it taxes. It's not about who's good and who's evil anymore, is it, Sam? Your brother is the idealist, but you, you're practical. Like me. You see people for how useful they can be to you. Well, I'm useful. I can save your brother. Why would I kill you when we can both be useful to each other? What do you say, Sam? The jar for your brother's life?"

Crowley's little speech struck a chord somewhere deep in Sam's gut. A discordant one. Unbidden, the ghost's words from the other night circled through Sam's mind, like sharks circling their prey. _You have no conviction. You are not the Righteous Man. You are empty._ Crowley's attempts to manipulate Sam into compliance would have worked a few years before, but Sam's experience with Gadreel had taught him two things: 1) trust no one completely, not even a Winchester and 2) there is always a loophole.

"If I do this," Sam said, "I need to be positive that you can do what you say you can. I need assurances that you can and will heal Dean."

"Oh you're a clever one aren't you? I must admit, I'm impressed with you, Sam. A few years ago, you would have signed away your soul to save your brother, no questions asked. Now? Now you're becoming a true part of the business. A real businessman knows how to negotiate. Alright, because I like you, I will do what you say. For one day, your brother will get no worse. I'm not going to heal him—I'm not that stupid—but he will not die. The disease will go into stasis, limbo, if you will."

"One week," Sam said, "Make it one week."

"Oh you're cheeky. No."

"One week or no deal."

"Two days."

"Four."

"Three."

"Fine." Sam had expected to only get two days, so three was a gift. Three more days for Dean.

"So how do we seal the deal?"

"I'm not kissing you."

Crowley chuckled. "Your loss. Let's just call this a gentleman's agreement, shall we? I hold up my end, you hold up yours, and Dean lives. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

Crowley warned him that he would not be double-crossed. "I don't like liars," he said, "Cross me and I will kill you. And this time, Samuel, you will stay dead. I'll chain you up in hell myself." And with that the King of Hell disappeared, leaving Sam alone in the truck with nothing but his thoughts and uneasiness coating his stomach.

Garth clambered back into his truck, splashing rain water in along with him. "So what happened?" he asked, "Please tell me you didn't make a deal with that guy."

"I bought us three days."

"Three days for what?"

"To find a cure for Dean." Sam quickly explained to the other hunter the deal he had made with Crowley and his plans to find another cure before the three days ran out. He only had one real plan left, and he hoped that Dean would be awake when they arrived back at the hospital. If they were going to ask Castiel for help, then Dean was going to have to be the one to pray.

When they arrived back at the hospital, Nurse Natalie was back on shift. She smiled when she saw him walk in. "Hi, Sam!" She frowned when she saw his cast. "What did you do to that cast? You just got it on!"

"I, uh, walked in the rain?"

She giggled. "Silly man. Come with me; we'll get you fixed up."

"Sure, just let me go see my brother first."

The nurse—who was surprisingly strong despite her petite size—tugged him down a corridor. "It will only take a minute," she promised.

"I'll check on Dean!" Garth called after him. Sam swore that Garth waggled his eyebrows at him. That was something he could never unsee.

The nurse pulled Sam into an empty examination room. "Let me go grab the casting tech," she said, "I'll be right back." She was halfway to the door when her back went rigid. Sam knew what that meant.

He was not surprised in the least when she turned around with blacked-out eyes. "Sam Winchester, as I live and breathe," she said with a heavy southern accent, "Well, I do neither of those things really."

"Is she dead?"

"Who?"

"The woman you're wearing."

"Oh, the nurse? Don't know. Don't really care. Some people can handle it and some can't. You should know that better than most anyone, Winchester." She said his surname like a curse. "Oh, did you like her? She was sweet, I suppose. I chose her for you, you know. The boss told me to pick a 'trustworthy' face. Said that's what you like. Girl next door and all that. Did you want her?" She ran a hand across her chest, letting her fingers dip slightly between her breasts. "Did you think about her? She may not be dead you know. I could give her back." She walked up to Sam, and since she was a full foot shorter than him at least, she stood on her tip-toes as she whispered, "Or I could just be me. Did it for you before, didn't it? With Ruby?"

Her breath tickled his neck in that soft, feminine way, the way Jess used to breathe into him in the morning when they woke up tangled together; it was deceptively beguiling. He took a deep, calming breath and said, "I'm not interested."

She stepped back from him and flipped her stolen red hair. "Have it your way, sugar. I'm only here to deliver a message anyway. I was kinda hoping I'd get a ride on the Winchester train, but it's no fire off my brimstone." She looked at her nails, feigning disinterest.

"What is the message?"

"Come with me and I'll show you."

The demon led him to his brother's hospital room. Dean, still eerily pale, lay unconscious on the bed. Crowley had kept his word: Dean did not look any worse. He didn't look any better, either. Sam hated this, hated seeing Dean ill. Dean was—is, he mentally corrected himself—Sam's constant. Having Dean there but not _there _left him in a perpetual state of indecision. He could live without Dean, and he had, but not now. Not right now. The world was going to shit and nothing made sense and there was _Pandora's Box_ to worry about and he couldn't do this without Dean. There was no "family business" without both the Winchesters.

"So I see you got the message," said not-Nurse Natalie.

"Loud and clear," said Sam.

"So I don't need to tell you that we're watching you, do I?"

Sam shook his head. "I got it."

"Well, we're watching you. The boss really wants whatever you got. Says it will change _everything." _

"I _got it."_

"You sure do," she said with a wink. She flounced toward the door but paused at the exit and said, "Sam Winchester, between you and me, don't fuck this one up. There's more than just your brother at stake."

He turned around to ask her what she meant but she was already gone. If Crowley's intention had been to mess with his mind, then he was doing a good job of it. Sam wondered if he had done the right thing. Making a deal with the King of Hell was risky, but he needed more time. More time to research Pandora's Box and figure out how to close it. More time to find a cure for Dean. More _time. _

"Sammy."

Dean's voice was weak and cracking. He went to his brother's bedside. Dean's eyes were barely open. The older Winchester looked like Death had been knocking on his front door, which, knowing Dean, probably wasn't far from the truth.

"Sammy, the jar. It was the jar," his brother croaked, "I'm sorry. He was right. I did it."

He wanted to put his good arm around Dean's shoulders, but the doctors had been very clear that there was to be no personal contact. So instead he settled for what he hoped was a look of sympathy and, "I know about the jar."

Dean repeated again and again that he was sorry. That "he" was right. That Dean did it. That it was all his fault. That he didn't know how to fix it. That he couldn't make it right.

Sam suspected that the medications were affecting his brother's mind. "C'mon, it's okay. We'll fix it. We always do." He tried to reassure his brother.

"No, no," Dean said, "He was right. I did it. It's my fault."

"Who is 'he'?"

"He's everything and it doesn't matter. Not to him."

"Dean, I don't know what you're talking about."

And then Dean began to cry. Well, not really. His brother was so dehydrated that no real tears came out but his body contorted and eyes squinted from anguished sobbing. Whatever this was, whatever was happening, it wasn't Dean. Dean didn't sob. Dean cried—they'd both died enough times to be sure of _that_—but Dean did not howl in abject misery. His brother did not, would not, let his emotions rip through his vocal cords, tearing them apart like vultures feasting upon carrion.

Sam yelled for the nurse—not Nurse Natalie hopefully—and within a few minutes two nurses and a doctor showed up to sedate Dean. The doctor assured Sam that it was delirium caused by the dehydration. They said it was to be expected for someone in his brother's condition. Sam had seen Dean go through some rough patches before, but nothing, _nothing_, had made his brother feel so awful as this. Crowley had promised that the disease would be in stasis; either the demon had lied or something else was going on with Dean.

It was time to pray to Castiel.

Sam found Garth and asked him to stay with Dean while he got some air. He wandered outside to the parking lot—would it ever stop raining?—and took a seat on an uncomfortable metal bench outside the E.R. entrance. He sat there for a few minutes before he plucked up the courage to pray. Castiel had always been more Dean's angel than he'd ever been Sam's, and it showed every time Sam tried to pray to him. To be fair, Cas hadn't been answering either Winchester in the months since he'd gotten his true Grace back, so Sam didn't have much hope that it would be different now. Except that he was praying about Dean.

"Hey, Cas…Castiel. I really hope you are listening because this is important. It's Dean. He's, he's really sick. I don't think he's going to make it. He needs you," Sam prayed. Please let this work.

Silence.

He tried again. "Castiel, Dean is your friend. He needs your help."

Nothing.

Sam sighed. Well, it was worth a try. At least he had a few days to come up with another solution to Dean's illness, but it was looking less and less likely that he was going to find one in time. How could he expect to cure a strain of cholera that was thousands of years old? Pandora's Box…he couldn't believe how massive this was. There wasn't a person on the planet who wouldn't be affected by what Dean had unleashed.

He rose and walked back into the hospital, pausing in the lobby to catch a glimpse of the news on the television. A massive earthquake had destroyed most of Los Angeles. Thousands dead. Tens of thousands injured. More than that were homeless. The newscaster broke face and cried on camera, stating, "How could this happen?" over and over and over.

Sam knew how and why it happened, and unfortunately the man who caused it all was laying upstairs unconscious in room 323.

Room 323.

Sam power-walked back to his brother's room. He knew what he had to do. He felt rather foolish for not thinking of it sooner, for omitting a key part of the prayer. As soon as he entered the hospital room he said, "Cas! Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital. Hastings, Nebraska. Room 323."

A fluttering of wings indicated the angel's arrival.

"What happened to Dean?" The angel stood next to Dean's bedside, his eyes never leaving the hunter's pale form. Cas looked at Dean the way a starving man would look at bread.

"Castiel," Sam said the angel's name like a beggar asking for change. "He opened Pandora's box. He didn't know what it was. It let out some awful diseases. The doctors say it's cholera and that he's…that it's not good." Sam didn't want to believe his own words. Garth took this as a cue to leave the room. The other hunter said that he'd be outside and slipped out.

The angel didn't say anything and the silence made Sam more nervous than he could ever remember being before. Yes, he and Dean had faced tough situations before, and every time they went up against the end of the world, nothing bothered him quite like the sense of _permanency_. That sense usually dissipated when the brothers found a potential solution—like when they found a way to kill Dick Roman or to toss Lucifer back into the cage. It was the bit before that—the stage when the brothers knew they couldn't stop the end from coming—that really got to Sam. It was the sense of not knowing how it was going to turn out, when he thought, "_Oh shit it might really be the end this time_." It reminded him too much of a day long ago when he couldn't save Dean, and that period immediately after when Sam had to acclimate to the permanency of life without his brother. Castiel, angel of the Lord, had saved two Winchesters by pulling Dean out of hell. Sam often wondered if there was ever a way to fully thank the angel, but as he saw the way that Castiel was looking at Dean right now, he knew that there were no words in any earthly language that would suffice.

The angel looked tired, and although Sam knew that Cas didn't need sleep, a part of him wanted to hand over a pillow and blanket. But he needed the angel's help now; there would be time for rest later. If the world decided to stop almost-ending every year. "Can you help Dean?" he asked Castiel.

The angel said, "I do not know if I can cure him."

And there died Sam's last contingency plan.

Castiel placed a hand on Dean's forehead. "He is sedated?" He said the words like a question but didn't expect an answer.

"Yes," said Sam, "Dean…he got a bit hysterical. Kept saying 'he,' whoever that may be, was right. That it was Dean's fault." A thought occurred to Sam. "Was he talking about you, Cas? Did you tell him it was his fault? How did you find him anyway?"

The angel shook his head. "I did not know it was Dean who opened it. I sensed it, and with anything that powerful, all of Heaven and Hell felt it unleashed. I did not say that it was Dean's fault. I merely implied it."

When and if this was all said and done with, Sam was going to hold a seminar titled "Clear Communication for the Emotionally Constipated and/or Ignorant" and force both Castiel and Dean to attend. Sam said instead, "Cas, he really believes it was his fault."

"Well, if he had not opened the jar—"

Sam groaned. "Yes, Cas, I know that Dean opened the jar and unleashed horrible things. I know. But the truth is he didn't know what he was doing. He didn't mean to do it. Yes, I know that's no excuse, but at the same time, should Dean shoulder all this guilt for a mistake? Cas, how many times have we, you and I, screwed up? How many times has Dean not held it against us?"

"Yes, your brother has always carried more guilt than is his share. I know it was a mistake. When I saw Dean in that motel room and I realized that he had unleashed Pandora's curse, I shielded his presence. I am the only one who knows that he opened it. At least I hope so. Perhaps I did not move quickly enough." Castiel moved to stand next to the unconscious hunter. "Would you like me to awaken him?"

"No, no. Let him sleep. When he wakes up…well, I don't want him to wake up without some kind of good news to tell him."

"Okay."

Sam maneuvered two chairs next to Dean's bedside. Not easy to do with only one good arm. "C'mon, Cas, pull up a chair."

"You have already pulled up the chairs."

"It's a figure of speech."

Castiel pointedly stared at Sam's casted arm. "You are injured."

"Compound fracture of the ulna. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my weekend you know? C'mon, sit down."

The angel did sit down, but before doing so he reached over and placed his hand on Sam's broken arm. Heat radiated up and down Sam's limb, and he felt the bone knitting itself back together. It wasn't the first time that Cas had patched him up, but Sam didn't think he'd ever get used to the feeling of angelic grace flowing through the very atoms of his body, even if it was only for a moment. "Thank you," Sam said.

"I imagine it would be difficult to hunt things with the use of only one arm. I was trying to be helpful."

"It is, Cas. It is very helpful. Um, could you help me get the cast off?"

A flick of an angel sword and the cast was gone forever.

For a while they sat and watched over Dean without speaking. Sam ran possible outcomes of the Pandora's Box scenario in his head and Cas, well, Cas looked like an abused puppy. This was not the same Castiel that had left them six months ago. The angel had always been quiet, but now he was silent, and caverns of that silence stretched between them, giant and yawning.

In his head, Sam calculated the likelihood that Castiel would tell him where he'd been for the past few months. Probability? Likely. Probability that Castiel would give him an intelligible answer? Not likely. Would Castiel tell him why he hadn't answered Dean's prayers? Probability zero.

Instead, the Winchester took a different tactic. "Crowley made me a deal," he said, "I took it."

The angel stiffened. "Sam, I know that you and I are not as bound together as Dean and I, but I still consider you my friend and I don't think Dean would think it wise to make a deal with Crowley for your soul."

"No, it's not like that. Crowley wants the jar."

"The jar?"

"Pandora's Box?"

"Oh you mean the _pithos_. The true meaning was lost in translation, you know."

Yes, Sam knew, but now wasn't the time to get lost in a discussion about ancient etymology or philology. He needed Castiel to focus, and judging by the way the angel was gazing at his brother (the word "lovelorn" flitted through Sam's head a few times), he knew that in order to accomplish anything at all would mean leaving Dean's side for a few minutes, as unnatural and against instinct as that was for him.

"Cas," he said, "Let's get a cup of coffee. I'll send Garth in to stay with Dean."

"I do not require caffeine to remain alert, Sam. I will hold vigil for Dean while you leave, if you wish."

Vigil. Castiel obviously wasn't aware of the more morose connotations connected with the word. Sam didn't want anyone to hold a vigil for Dean. Ever. Not as long as he lived and breathed and could think of ways to save his brother.

"Cas," he said, "Come on. We need to talk. We need to figure out how to save Dean."

That got the angel's attention. "Yes," he said, "We must save Dean."

Sam didn't know he needed to hear Castiel say it aloud—he knew, had always known, that Cas would save Dean, just like Dean would save Cas, back and forth back and forth until they were just always _there_ for each other—but now that Cas had said it, Sam felt a smidgen of his uneasiness evaporate, and the tension in his spine relieved just a touch. Together, Castiel and he would save Dean.

Sam and Cas walked down the hall to a small waiting room where there was a vending machine. Because of the cholera scare, Sam was a little anxious about drinking water that he hadn't treated himself, so he got himself a diet Coke. Cas didn't want anything. The angel awkwardly positioned himself on one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs, waiting for Sam to begin the conversation. Right. It was up to Sam to steer their rescue mission. But first, he wanted Castiel to know something about Dean. Sam said, "Dean, ah, he missed you, you know."

"I am surprised Dean would speak about such things. It does not seem to be his way."

"He, ah, he didn't talk about it."

"Then how would you know?"

"Cas, sometimes the things that a person can't or won't say are as significant as the things they do say."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"He didn't have to say that he missed you. I just kinda knew."

"Well, I missed the presence of the Winchesters as well. However, I believe that, according to Dean, this would qualify as a 'chick flick moment.'"

Sam said, "Yes, it does. It certainly does." If only Cas knew how much. When it came to his brother and the angel, Sam wasn't certain if he was trapped in the pages of _Tristan and Isolde _or in a replay of _Fatal Attraction_. Okay, maybe comparing Cas to Glenn Close was an exaggeration. Dean was better at the pop culture references. "Cas," he said, "It doesn't look good for Dean, does it? This time, it feels…different."

Cas cocked his head. "I'm not sure what you mean, Sam. Every time that Dean Winchester's life is in danger, I am ill at ease. This one instance is as serious as any other as far as I am concerned."

"Of course it's serious. I meant that _I_ feel differently about this time. But I don't know why that is. Dean—he's all I got, you know? And I've lost him before, Cas. I can't do that again. I won't do that again. So what are we going to do?"

"We will do what we have to do. Just as we have always done. Your brother's condition is stable for now. I assume that is because of the deal you made with the demon?"

"Errr…yes. Crowley stabilized him. In three days, or two and a half now I guess, I am supposed to give Crowley the jar and in return he will heal Dean. I only did it to buy us more time," explained Sam.

"You could have asked me for help," said Castiel.

"Dean has been praying to you for six months, Cas. You never once answered. Don't be offended, but I kind of put you down as the last resort because I didn't know whether or not you would answer, and I couldn't take the chance. Not when it comes to Dean."

The effect of Sam's words was immediate and much harsher than he intended. The angel looked ashamed. Dean would have been able to pinpoint the exact physical tells that, when added together, unequivocally proved Castiel's shame, but Sam knew on instinct that whatever had kept Cas away from them for the past six months, it wasn't by choice. If Sam hadn't seen firsthand that Castiel could smite a demon with little more than the touch of his hand, well, he would say that the angel was _broken_. He'd only seen one other person look the way Castiel did now, and that person was down the hall, unconscious and dying. He put a hand—which was no longer casted, thank Chuck—on Castiel's shoulder and said, "Listen. It doesn't matter why you were gone. I don't care. Dean won't care. You are here now and we are going to fix this. Dean. Pandora's Box. All of it. Okay?"

"You are a good man, Sam Winchester. I am honored to be your friend."

Sam felt the same and he said so. Cas looked a little sheepish, like he didn't deserve the praise, so he awkwardly changed the subject to forming a plan to close Pandora's Box (or pithos, as Cas called it). They talked, each sharing their own knowledge of the jar (Sam's own knowledge was pitiful in comparison to Castiel's), but in the end, after much debate, no solution could be reached. Castiel said he knew a demigod or two that may have some answers, but he didn't want to leave Dean in such a fragile state (as a younger brother, it simultaneously pained and amused Sam to think of Dean as "fragile").

"Is there anything we can do about Dean's illness?" asked Sam, "Can we slow it down or, I don't know, isolate it? Like what Crowley did but more effective."

Castiel was quite for a long moment and then he said, "Yes, that should be possible. I cannot cure him; no one can. His illness is tethered to the pithos. As long as the curse of Pandora plagues the world, Dean will suffer. Crowley managed to stop the advancement of the disease, but that did nothing for your brother's mental health. Crowley either lied to you or does not know that it is incurable. Or it is possible he is going to take the curse into himself, although I doubt it. I cannot free Dean of the curse, but I can lessen its effects. I hope."

As screwed up as the world was at the moment, Sam was glad to have Castiel back. Dean was right; Cas was family.

Eventually, they ran out of things to talk about and, although neither would say it aloud, they didn't want to be away from Dean any longer. As they headed back down the long, sterile hallway, Sam tried desperately to avoid comparisons to Stephen King's _The Shining_ (he hoped to Chuck that no creepy twin girls would pop out in front of him). The hospital was quiet, too quiet, and it felt wrong. Next to him, Castiel's tension was almost palpable. Something was wrong.

That something appeared in the shape of a hippie Professor McGonagall.

"Suriel."

Sam wasn't sure if Castiel said the word or if he had breathed it out.

The older woman, wrapped in green velvet from head-to-toe, stared at Castiel. Never blinking. She stood between them and the entrance to Dean's room, and that worried Sam more than he had been when Crowley was sitting six inches from him in Garth's truck.

"Castiel," she said, "How lovely to see you." She didn't sound like she meant it.

"Why are you here, Suriel?"

"Family business. Who is that?" She nodded her head toward Sam, who suddenly found a profound interest in the linoleum floor.

"He is my friend," said Castiel. It sounded like a warning.

Nothing more was spoken between the two, but much more was communicated. The woman nodded curtly at Castiel, smiled like a barracuda at Sam, and vanished.

"I'm guessing that was an angel," said Sam.

"Yes," replied Castiel, "That was Suriel. An archangel. The only archangel, now."

He didn't say anything else about Suriel, didn't offer any other explanation for her sudden appearance. Sam wondered if Suriel were part of the reason that Cas had been away for the past six months. He made a mental note to have Dean discuss it with him if, no _when_, he woke up.

When they walked into Dean's hospital room, they found Garth, curled up and sound asleep in a chair next to Dean's bed. Some babysitter he turned out to be, thought Sam. He shook the other hunter awake, not-so-gently.

"Mmmnnngh not gonna wake up. Having good dream," mumbled Garth.

Sam sighed and left Garth alone. Let him wake up with a crick in the neck, then.

Castiel stood next to Dean. Most would call it "uncomfortably close."

"You understand that if I try to improve Dean's condition, I will be undoing whatever Crowley has done?"

Cas didn't need to spell out that if it didn't work, Dean would be in a worse position than before. Sam weighed the options and found that he trusted Castiel with Dean, and if he were being honest with himself, it wasn't only because Crowley was the other option.

"Do it," said Sam.

Castiel placed his hand on Dean's forehead, and from his palm a faint light flowed into Dean's body. As Castiel's Grace flowed into his brother's body once again, the angel's eyes became alight with some power that Sam had never seen before. The Grace twirled and embraced Dean, as it would an old friend—or lover, Sam's brain helpfully supplied—and the older Winchester arched up to meet it. This wasn't like when Castiel had healed Sam's arm earlier, this was visual poetry, an amalgamation of angel and hunter. A union.

It was so obvious to him in that moment. Dean and Castiel. Castiel and Dean. Blended, merged, absorbed, integrated so completely into each other that it no longer made sense to Sam how the two could ever be apart. Dean and Castiel. Castiel and Dean. Sam had always thought that if Dean ever found "the one" that it would be the end for them, for the family business. No more hunting. No more car rides to nowhere in the Impala. No more bitchfaces. Dean would leave, Sam would leave, and they would grow apart. But in that moment, watching Castiel heal his brother yet again, Sam knew that it was just the opposite. Since the angel's arrival in their lives, Dean had become a better brother and a better man.

"It is done."

"Did it work?" asked Sam.

"The cholera is gone," said Cas, "But the curse is still in his body. I have built a wall in his mind against the mental effects, like I did for you once. But, for Dean, the wall will keep him from succumbing to depression or guilt. He will probably not realize how serious the consequences are for opening the pithos unless he is directly confronted with them. Perhaps that is for the best."

"So, you're saying he'll be okay? Not cured, but okay?"

Castiel nodded. "He should wake up any minute now."

As if on cue, the older Winchester groaned and rolled over. Dean was pale; it was not the translucent frailty that was popular in film adaptations of YA novels, but rather Dean was dried out, like a forgotten flower that withered and wilted from neglect. Crinkled, yellowy, and crumbling from the inside out.

"Will he still be in pain?" asked Sam.

"Yes," admitted Castiel, "I cannot fully erase the effects of the illness from his body. He is still dehydrated and near-starving. But the pain will be minimal. I, I have made sure of that." He still stood too close to Dean. "Sam, I must go. Suriel's appearance has…" Cas paused here, almost as if he were trying out words for size. "Suriel's appearance has changed things."

"Can't you wait until Dean wakes up? He's waited so long to see you again."

Cas shook his head. "This cannot wait." He paused again. "Tell Dean…tell him that I say 'hello.'" And the angel disappeared.

Hello? Six months of waiting and that's all Dean was going to get? Sam wished there were a sizable hammer nearby with which he could knock some sense into the angel. This was getting ridiculous.

Sam took the chair next to Garth, grabbed one of the crappy hospital magazines, and settled in to wait for Dean to wake up. He was halfway through an article explicitly detailing K-Stew's most recent breakup with the twinkly vampire dude when Dean began to wake up.

"Dean? You with me, man?"

Dean groaned. "Sammy?" he croaked.

"How are you feeling? Are you alright?"

"I feel like shit, but that's a helluva lot better than before." He opened his eyes. "So what's been going on?"

Sam quickly summed up the discovery of Pandora's Box, the almost-deal with Crowley, the arrival of Suriel, and the return (and subsequent departure) of Castiel. Sam left out the bit about Cas putting his body in stasis and the mental wall that had been constructed in Dean's mind. Dean would be okay, mentally, if he didn't realize how bad it was. As for everything else that had happened? Dean took it all in stride, even commenting that "he was such a dumbass" for opening the jar without translating it. Sam noticed that Dean said absolutely nothing about Cas, but his brother couldn't hide the flicker of emotion that crossed his face each time they said the angel's name. When Sam was done recounting the story, Dean said, "I've really screwed up this time, huh?"

Sam shrugged. "We've dealt with worse."

Dean sighed. "That may be true but it doesn't change the fact that I fucked up. And here I am, cursed and useless."

"Cas thinks you'll be on your feet again once you've rested up and rehydrated. I've warded the room against demons, but that's not going to stop Crowley for long. He's gonna be angry about me not holding up my end of the bargain. We're gonna have to leave as soon as we can."

Dean smirked. "Planning on skipping out on the bill?"

"Absolutely."

They sat for a while, each one silently thankful that Dean was still alive and breathing. The only sound was Garth's quiet snoring, but Sam still didn't want to wake the other man up. Without Garth, Dean would likely be dead in a motel bathroom.

Dean was about to settle back into sleep when Sam passed along Castiel's message in little more than a whisper. "By the way, Cas says 'hello.'"

Dean didn't respond. A few minutes later, Sam got up to go get another drink from the vending machine. As he walked out the door, he heard Dean praying.

"Cas, hey, I'm awake. Sam gave me your message. It's good to have you back, man."

END PART THREE

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